Did Donald Trump reach an agreement with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on the DREAM Act?
I woke to the news emblazoned all across the internet that last night Donald Trump reached an agreement with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on the DREAM Act. The deal supposedly grants amnesty to the dreamers while providing for more border security without funding the wall.
Of course some sites were talking about how Donald Trump caved to the Democrats and this was sure to send the President’s base fleeing. But is there a deal?
Here is more:
The top House and Senate Democrats said Wednesday they had reached agreement with President Donald Trump to protect thousands of younger immigrants from deportation and fund some border security enhancements — not including Trump’s long-sought border wall.
The agreement, the latest instance of Trump ditching his own party to make common cause with the opposition, was announced by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi following a White House dinner that Republican lawmakers weren’t invited to attend. It would enshrine protections for the nearly 800,000 immigrants brought illegally to this country as kids who had benefited from former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which provided temporary work permits and shielded recipients from deportation.
That certainly sounds like an agreement, but here is more:
“We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement.
So they agreed to reach an agreement.
And isn’t that what Donald Trump wanted in the first place when he announced he was ending the DACA program? Despite the way the media and the Democrats portrayed his original announcement–claiming the deportations and internment camps were to start immediately, and families being ripped apart by the White Supremacist in the White House–the original announcement was always designed to get the Congress to act on a permanent and Constitutional solution.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Senate rejects new war authorization amendment
The headline might be a little misleading at first glance. Rand Paul was spearheading an effort to add an amendment to the defense bill which was designed to bring the war-making power back to the Congress where it belongs, but it was defeated by a large margin.
Here is more:
The Senate on Wednesday rejected a bipartisan push for a new war authorization against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, electing to let the White House rely on a 16-year-old law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks as the legal basis to send U.S. troops into combat.
Senators voted 61-36 scuttle an amendment to the annual defense policy bill by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have allowed war authorizations, created in the wake of al-Qaida’s 9/11 strikes, to lapse after six months. Paul, a leader of the GOP’s noninterventionist wing, said Congress would use the time to debate an updated war authority for operations in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere before the old ones expired.
This was not an attempt to end the war in the Middle East but rather an attempt to hold the Senate responsible for any continued war in the Middle East. Here is more on that:
Bitter Hillary wanted to ‘make voodoo dolls of certain members of the press and Congress and stick them full of pins’
Ten months after losing an election she had no reason to believe she was going to lose, and an election she had no business losing, Hillary Clinton is still bitter. I cannot blame her, it must have been a blow to her ego and her entitlement mentality to lose to a political novice, but at some time you have to let it go and move on.
But she cannot let it go, she is currently on a book tour–ironically to make money off of her loss–and from some of the excerpts I have seen she is blaming everybody but herself. But in a recently released excerpt her bitterness, which is not healthy, is shining through. In fact I think it shines a light on the type of person she is. Here is the excerpt I am talking about:
Mitch McConnell claims the spending deal Donald Trump struck with Chuck Schumer will raise the debt ceiling for 18 months
Last week Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi reached an agreement on a spending deal which we were told would raise the debt ceiling for three months in return for funding Hurricane Harvey relief for the flood victims in Texas.
This infuriated Republicans, who wanted an 18 month debt ceiling deal so the next battle over the limit would not be held until after the 2018 election. Today Mitch McConnell announced he used a little trickery in the final deal to extend the debt ceiling debate for the 18 months Republicans had hoped for.
Here is more:
Hillary Clinton’s timeline is wrong: she lied about why she called Trump supporters ‘deplorables’
I believe one of the biggest reasons Hillary Clinton lost the election–in addition to being a horrible candidate and an even worse campaigner–was because she called half of Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables” and “irredeemable.” I honestly believe this turned off voters who were undecided at the time and I think the damage was irreparable.
Hillary Clinton has begun her book tour and in an interview over the weekend she denied this comment was part of her downfall, in fact she defended it:
“I thought Trump was behaving in a deplorable manner. I thought a lot of his appeals to voters were deplorable. I thought his behavior, as we saw on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape was deplorable. And there were a large number of people who didn’t care. It did not matter to them.”
Former aide testifies Bob Menendez lobbied for visas for donor’s friends
You might not know this if you watch the mainstream media but Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is on trial for corruption and bribery. You also might not be aware of the report that Harry Reid contacted Barack Obama’s White House in 2011 and asked the President to intervene in the investigation.
Here is a little background in case you missed it:
The two men were indicted in 2015 and face multiple fraud and bribery charges. Prosecutors said they orchestrated a scheme in which Melgen gave Menendez gifts and campaign donations in exchange for Menendez’s political influence.
But anyway, the trial is now underway and it has not started out well for the Senator from New Jersey. Today a former aide to the Senator testified that Bob Menendez sought visas at the request of Salomon Melgen. Salomon Melgen is on trial with Bob Menendez, he is the man that allegedly bribed him.
Here is more:
A former staffer for U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez testified Monday that the New Jersey Democrat was involved in helping with the visa applications of friends of a wealthy doctor who is on trial with him.
Under direct questioning from the government, former senior policy adviser Mark Lopes testified that Menendez emailed him in 2008 authorizing a letter of support from Menendez to be sent to consular officials regarding the visa applications of two sisters from the Dominican Republic.
One of the emails sent around the time had a subject line that read: “Dr. Melgen’s request.”
When the applications were denied despite Menendez’s signed letter, Lopes testified, Menendez instructed him to reach out to the U.S. ambassador.
The sisters were friends of Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, a longtime friend of Menendez’s.
Certainly looks like pay to play to me.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Saturday, September 9th open thread: ‘Thank You’
The open thread comes on Saturday this week because today Lauri and I are celebrating our 28th wedding anniversary and we will be making out annual jaunt to Portsmouth to celebrate later today.
“My love is strong, with you there is no wrong,
together we shall go until we die. My, my, my.
An inspiration is what you are to me, inspiration, look… see.
And so today, my world it smiles, your hand in mine, we walk the miles,
Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one.
Happiness, no more be sad, happiness….I’m glad.”
I love you. Thank you.
Jeff Sessions will not reconsider prosecuting Lois Lerner
Not that I was expecting anything different, but today Donald Trump’s Department of Injustice announced it would not reconsider prosecuting Lois Lerner. Here is more:
After being asked by Republicans in April to take a “fresh look” at the case against Lerner, the Trump administration responded Friday that it had reviewed the case and decided against it.
“[T]he Department determined that reopening the criminal investigation would not be appropriate based on the available evidence,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote in a letter to Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Of course there is not enough evidence, all of the IRS computers suddenly, and conveniently, “crashed” and then were destroyed for good measure, but it should be remembered that this scandal first came to light when Lois Lerner ADMITTED the IRS “inappropriately” targeted Tea Party groups.
Meanwhile Lois Lerner is retired and receiving a full pension…
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Berkeley students want to name campus building after a cop killer
Students at the University of California-Berkeley want to rename a campus building because the person the building is named after, a former university president, was a white supremacist–or at least was sympathetic to white supremacy. Here is more:
students have been battling with administrators to purge the name of a past university president from one campus building. From The College Fix:
Barrows Hall is named after the university’s president from 1919 to 1923, David Barrows, an anthropologist who served as superintendent of schools in Manila when the Philippines became a U.S. colony, according to the University of California Academic Senate’s biography in memoriam.
The Daily said his academic work was informed by “white supremacist ideology.” In 2015 the Black Student Union demanded the name’s removal among other high-priced demands, calling Barrows an “imperialist by way of anthropology [who] participated in perpetuating American colonialism.”
I have no problem with that whatsoever, however get a load of the person the students want the building named after:
Who is this outstanding individual more worthy of recognition?
A cop killer:
The BSU insisted that Barrows Hall be renamed after Black Panther Assata Shakur, a convicted cop killer who escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba. Shakur is on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists.
A convicted cop killer who escaped from jail and is living in exile in Cuba, why am I not surprised?
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Donald Trump wants a permanent DACA deal
As you know by know, because quite frankly you can not avoid it, earlier this week Donald Trump announced he was repealing DACA but would hold off on implementing his new order for six months in order to allow the Congress time to come up with a solution. (We can question how the Congress is going to come up with a deal in six months when they have not been able to do so for five years.)
The fear mongering, party of no Democrats have been seriously misrepresenting what the President did on DACA: they have made it sound as if deportations will start immediately and families will be ripped apart heartlessly by our white supremacist leader. But that is simply not true, in fact it is a lie. Because DACA was unilaterally implemented by the former President it can be repealed unilaterally by the current President but despite the protestations of the Democrats he did not do that, he gave them the chance to make it permanent.
America's Watchtower 