Sen. Portman’s finger to the wind

Either Sen. Portman has his finger to the wind, or he is stalling until he has enough cover to vote for the bill. Cleveland.com reports:

“I’m trying to come up with an alternative way to deal with this,” Portman told reporters on Tuesday. “I’ll make a decision next week, of course, when the issue comes before us, but I’m trying to get a result here. I know some in the media are very eager to see an immediate decision, but that’s not the way I look at this."

Portman, a Republican, says he supports Trump’s border security plan and wants to help him achieve it. But he wants it done in a way “that doesn’t lead to setting a bad precedent and having some of the funds be tied up in court.”

With that in mind, Portman says he’s seeking to change the wording of the House-passed resolution, to include language that would ensure the national emergency process is not being abused and to clarify that there is money from sources like drug seizures that Trump could use for the border wall.

“One way to handle this is to clarify that so there’s no need to go to an emergency,” said Portman. “And we’re looking at other ideas as well.”

Uh huh. Read the rest here. From the Wikipedia page:

Between the enactment of the National Emergencies Act in 1976 through February 15, 2019, 59 emergencies have been declared;[3] 27 have expired while 32 are currently in effect, each having been renewed annually by the president.

The list is here. Yes, Congress can vote to end an emergency, but the present southern border crisis is an emergency. Sen Portman, Sen. Mitch McConnell, et al, are once again just trying to obstruct President Trump's efforts.

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Border Security budget is better than we’ve been told -- UPDATED

photo credit: personalliberty.com

Paul Bedard at Washington Examiner has some good news: the budget including the $1.5 billion for border security is better than the mainstream media has been telling you:

Republicans are pushing back on reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., beat President Trump in the latest budget shutdown fight, claiming that Congress approved historic funding levels for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, added miles to the border wall, and erased the cap on criminal illegal immigrants that can be jailed.

. . .

What’s more, Trump and GOP negotiators led by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and his team blocked several moves by Pelosi and other Democrats to fill the deal with anti-wall moves like lowering spending for ICE and slashing the number of “detention beds” to hold criminal illegal immigrants.

“Pelosi lost. She knew her position on detentions beds was unsustainable and only playing to her fringe. She also said no new miles for the wall,” said the source. “She had to step back from all positions.”

Read the rest here. (H/T Don Surber)

UPDATE 5pm: Rush Limbaugh via Fox News disagrees:

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, speaking to "Fox News Sunday," charged that the compromise spending bill recently signed by President Trump to avert another partial government shutdown was little more than a disguised effort by some Republicans to torpedo his 2020 presidential candidacy.

"Both parties have people that are still trying to get rid of Donald Trump," Limbaugh said, asserting that Democrats are also working to guarantee a "permanent underclass of voters" who are "uneducated" and "don't even speak" English.

He continued: "I read this bill -- this spending bill, this bill is outrageous. [It includes] welcoming centers for newly arriving illegal aliens, and all kinds of medical care" -- a reference to the allocation of $192,700,000 in the bill's conference agreement to enhance medical care and transportation for illegal immigrants in U.S. custody, including to shelters run by nonprofits.

"The purpose of this bill, I think, was eventually to be used by the Democrats and some Republicans to tell the American people, 'See, electing President Trump was pointless, worthless, he can't protect you, he can't stop us, he can't do what he said he was going to do, because we hate him so much we're not going to allow him to do it -- that's what this bill is," Limbaugh said.

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What is a Xanatos Gambit?

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit

The reactions to Trump’s White House speech offering a compromise to get the Wall funded and stop the partial government shutdown were in many ways predictable. Ann Coulter was apoplectic, the mainstream media called President Trump more names, and Democrat leadership Schumer and Pelosi rejected his proposal out-of-hand. Some conservative commentators were of the opinion that Trump knew full well his proposal would be rejected by the Democrats, putting them in the intransigence column in order to pacify their hard-to-the-left base, while not seriously advancing any real concessions to Dreamers. Maybe.

But one of the more interesting takes was at Chicago Boyz and linked via American Thinker:

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a ‘Xanatos Gambit’ is a plan for which all foreseeable outcomes benefit the creator — including ones that superficially appear to be failure.  

And here’s the theoretical application to the Wall stand-off:

President Trump’s “Big  Macs served at the White House” and grounding Speaker Pelosi’s Congressional Junkets on military transports during a government shut down over funding “The Wall” are both very much in that “Xanatos Gambit” frame work.  President Trump is staying on the offensive so House Democrats and the media cannot “get off a shot” over the Government shut down. 

More at all the links.

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Update on The Wall

Kris W. Kobach drafted the border / immigration legislation for Arizona, was (to my surprise) defeated in his recent run for Governor of Kansas, but currently serves as Kansas’s Secretary of State. He reports on the GoFundMe project to fund the wall on Breitbart (previous CTP blog here):

We are witnessing something truly extraordinary. In merely 19 days, a GoFundMe campaign to raise private contributions to build sections of the wall along the Mexico border has raised an astonishing $19.0 million. It will soon be the most successful GoFundMe campaign ever—the current record holder is the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund for victims of sexual assault, which raised $22 million in 2018 over a much longer period of time. The campaign to build the wall should blow past that number in a few days.

Let’s put this in perspective. Consider the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Tax Check-Off, which is promoted by the IRS through the 1040 tax form and doesn’t require a contributor to give any money beyond what he is already paying in taxes. In April of 2016—normally the highest contribution month during a presidential campaign year—it raised $9.9 million. In a typical month, it raises less than a million dollars.

The GoFundMe wall campaign was started on December 16, 2018, by Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, who lost three limbs while serving in Iraq in 2004. As Kolfage told me, “People are angry about the inaction on building the border wall. They’re opening their checkbooks to donate as a way of making their voices heard.”

The astonishing number of contributions that this project has received from ordinary Americans demonstrates just how important the wall is to the American people. Citizens see the crime, wage depression, and other negative consequences of illegal immigration, and they want something done about it.

More here. And here’s the report on pending legislation that will provide the conduit between the GoFundMe contributions and the construction and maintenance of the wall; click here.

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Update on the Uniparty

image credit: sol1776.blogspot.com 

Angry at Trump if he signs the Continuing Resolution? Sundance puts the latest headlines in perspective:

President Trump said he wouldn’t sign another CR that didn’t fund the border wall.  Right now Mitch and Chuck are writing a CR that doesn’t fully fund the border wall.  Why would Mitch McConnell do that? Because he wants to, that’s why.  UniParty !

Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Paul Ryan are working to put a take it or leave it bill in front of the President and force him to accept it.  Republicans currently control the House and Senate.  Why would McConnell and Ryan put President Trump into that position?  Because they want to, that’s why.

. . .

it’s not President Trump who is the issue here; it’s the people who oppose him.  Anger toward President Trump is misplaced; but directing all fire against their enemy is what these Machiavellian sorts are professionals at doing.  That’s exactly what this plan is designed to do.  This is politics.

Who opposes Trump?  The people who write the laws.  Mitch, Paul, Nancy and Chuck are the professional political team who do the bidding of the lobbyists and special interests.  It’s a big club, and we, along with President Trump, ain’t in it.  

Getting you mad at President Trump is in the DC interests.  The UniParty knows how to play you.

President Trump represents a second party in Washington DC.  The people who write the laws (lobbyists), and the people who sell the laws (politicians), cannot allow that.  They need to get back to UniParty political business.  They need to get rid of Trump.

Think about it as you direct your fire.

Your enemy is not President Trump.

The entire article is here (and it's long).

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The Wall ~ progress report

Via Breitbart: Yesterday, President Trump inspected eight prototypes for The Wall at the Mexican border. He prefers ones with see-through capability at ground level as well as those with a rounded top to make it more difficult to use a rope or grappling hooks to get over.

The controversial Dangerous blogger/authorMilo also preferred the one Trump leaned toward. Milo had some fun comments on the various prototypes of an artistic nature; I had missed the aesthetics. His blog is here. 

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Donald J. Trump on Immigration policy

Press conference with Mexico President Neito earlier today

Photo credit: New York Times

Donald Trump met earlier today with Mexico President Peña Neito on the subject of immigration policy, building the wall, and other topics of mutual interest. 

Trump’s anticipated speech tonight on Immigration, from Arizona, is being broadcast live at 9pm (6 pm Phoenix time) on C-Span. If your cable provider does not include C-Span, you can watch a livestream RSBN video via YouTube (h/t Sundance). The video below is from the Phoenix venue covering pre-speech interviews. It will probably segue straight into Trump's speech; I'll post another link if it does not.

Here's a for sure live stream link to the speech (h/t Sundance). As I post this, Trump has just arrived in Phoenix:

Or, if you need an embiggened image, go straight to YouTube here.

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About that wall

Art credit: raymondpronk.wordpress

About that wall...

Over at Conservative Treehouse we read that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is outraged at GOP candidate Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall at the southern border of the US. The Prince

has called Donald Trump a disgrace to the United States following his call for a ban on Muslims entering the country, and demanded the Republican front-runner withdraw from the U.S. presidential race.

. . .

“You are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America,” Prince Alwaleed, the chairman of Kingdom Holding, said on his Twitter account, addressing Trump and referring to the Republican Party.

Screen shot of the Twitter Feed is at the link here.

This report links to The Jerusalem Post here:

Just over a week ago, IS militants launched an attack on a Saudi border post, killing a senior Saudi general and two border guards, marking the first direct IS assault on Saudi grounds, The Telegraph reported. 

In an effort to defend itself from the IS threat and further attacks, the [Saudi] kingdom launched a massive project to construct a "Great Wall" along it's northern border with Iraq, where IS presence is heavy. 

Proposed in 2006, the border zone entails five layers of fencing, supplemented by watch towers, radar cameras, night-vision security, and a heavy presence of extra Saudi troops, according to the report. 

The wall is set to extend nearly 1000-km and will combine fence and ditch barriers along the northern Saudi border. 

Riyadh hopes that the completed project will fend off IS threats and keep the relatively closed kingdom, closed indeed.

Hypocrisy.

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