There is really no other way to put the mess the country is in, other than to say it is in “one mell of a hess.” From our two political parties being at each other’s throats – to Trump’s temper tantrums, it is amazing that any of us have managed to not have a nervous breakdown.
And the major news stations are not helping the situation, and I am calling out Fox and CNN, among others. Getting the news about what is actually going on in the world has become difficult because the “talking heads” spend all their air time telling us their version of the news, rather than being unbiased in their presentation.
And behind all of the latest crisis’ going on this week – the Mueller investigation keeps going forward – along with the questionable “breaking news” on he or she claiming they were told to lie for the president. All this has done is to make “impeachment” the key word on everyone’s minds today.
Trump owns the shutdown
But let’s go back to the reason for the government shutdown. The Democrats do not want to give the president $5.7 billion in one lump sum to build his Great Border Wall, and Trump refuses to budge on taking less money, even though this has been offered.
House Leader, Nancy Pelosi has impressed the hell out of me by her strong stance in not backing down, despite the president’s threats of a shutdown, and just remember, he said he would be delighted to “own” the shutdown.
Building the wall across our Southern border was a campaign promise Trump desperately wants to keep. He bombed out with his promise to coal miners to resurrect the coal industry, and he hasn’t really done that well with his denials of climate change.
Coal-fired power plants are slowly but surely going the way of the dinosaurs and renewable energy resources and electric vehicles that don’t pollute our air are becoming the new frontier in industry, regardless of if Trump pulls us out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
There’s another caravan a’coming
Today has been an interesting day – mainly because I have no other way to describe it without losing my temper. Trump is having a tweet-fest talking about the new caravans coming into Mexico. Around 2,000 migrants are traveling in the latest caravan — smaller than the one that swelled to 7,000 migrants late last year. But Trump is ready to call them an “invasion” by “criminals” and “thugs” just like he did last year.
On January 15, Trump tweeted: “A big new Caravan is heading up to our Southern Border from Honduras. Tell Nancy and Chuck that a drone flying around will not stop them. Only a Wall will work. Only a Wall, or Steel Barrier, will keep our Country safe! Stop playing political games and end the Shutdown!”
According to the AFP, the immigrants are coming from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, fleeing poverty and crime in Central America’s “Northern Triangle.” Many people don’t realize that these three countries are among the most violent in the world.
Prayer rugs on the border?
Amidst all the BS that has been going on the past few days, The Atlantic reported today that Trump tweeted about a story from the Washington Examiner that cited an anonymous rancher who claimed that Muslim “prayer rugs” were found at the U.S. border.
Border rancher: “We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal.” Washington Examiner People coming across the Southern Border from many countries, some of which would be a big surprise.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2019
Apparently, the “anonymous rancher” claims that Muslim “prayer rugs” have been found at the U.S. border. with Mexico for several months.” There is no proof to back up the rancher’s claims, but Trump jumped on the story like a duck on a June bug.
“There’s a lot of people coming in not just from Mexico … People, the general public, just don’t get the terrorist threats of that,” the story quotes the rancher as saying. “That’s what’s really scary. You don’t know what’s coming across. We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal. It’s not just Mexican nationals that are coming across.”
The big announcement on Saturday
Besides the open warfare between Trump and Pelosi over her trip to visit the troops in Afghanistan – Trump says her trip was just an excursion, while Pelosi accuses him of breaking national security rules by talking about it in the first place, Trump is actually beginning to wear down a bit.
This evening, the Associated Press reported that Trump says he’ll make a “major announcement” on the government shutdown and the southern border on Saturday afternoon as the standstill over his border wall continues.
Another anonymous source – apparently a White House staff member familiar with the planning – said Trump plans to outline a new deal with specific proposals that the administration believes could potentially pave the way to the shutdown’s end. One thing is certain, though – Trump will not back down on his demand for the $5.7 billion for his wall.
Regardless of what the president says tomorrow, and believe me, it will be fact-checked, the political stakes are high. Keep in mind that this coming Tuesday is the deadline to process government employees’ paychecks. If that doesn’t happen, there will be another round of zeros on Friday’s payday.