Although the partial government shutdown has been called off for three weeks, the arguments for and against the border wall continue.  Republicans keep reminding anyone who will listen that, in recent times, the Democrats have supported the building of a wall on the southern border.  That’s true, of course.  Schumer and Obama and Clinton and Feinstein and the rest of the progressive imbeciles all voted to build a wall, and never followed through.  The trick is to convince people who don’t pay much attention that you are in favor of protecting the border, without really closing up the sieve that is our southern border.   And the Democrats looked upon the open border and saw that it was good – for them.  So-called Republicans, eager to serve their Chamber of Commerce masters didn’t protest much.  The Democrat playbook never changed over the years.  They’d found the perfect formula.  Promise the sheep of the electorate anything, but deliver nothing.  Obama, Schumer and the rest all stood in front of cameras and decried illegal immigration.  It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.  The Democrats vowed to secure the border, but did nothing.  There were consequences.  More than 600,000 residents of Texas became crime victims at the hands of illegal aliens.  Too bad.  There were troubling recurrent stories of Americans murdered in their prime by illegals.  Regrettable,  but acceptable to the Democrats, who looked upon the open border and saw that it was good – for them.  Time passed.  And then, over the horizon came Donald Trump.  Like the Democrats, and so-called Republicans, Trump spoke out against illegal immigration, but he was different than the rest.  Trump wasn’t satisfied with just promising to secure the border.  He actually intended to do what he promised.  Think of Rocky, “He don’t know it’s damn a show, he thinks it’s a fight.”  And fight Trump did.  He talked about the wall, he gathered designs for the wall, and he actually began to build the wall that Democrats had promised 11 years before.  Something had to be done.  The Dems and Never-Trump so-called Republicans had finally found common ground for bipartisan action.  Trump must be destroyed.  If he wants a wall, there must be no wall.  If the border sieve continues to be overrun with illegals, who can’t be held, can’t he housed, can’t be financially and medically supported, and can’t simply be sent back to from whence they came, so be it.  Trump must be destroyed.  And the Democrats looked upon the chaos on the border and said that it was good – for them.  And as the Democrats continued their relentless march to the Left, their border position became easier for them.  They still said the magic words, “We are all for border security,” but added, “just without a wall.”  Walls work in Israel, and in Syria, and in Denmark, and around the Vatican, and around any number of homes and estates peopled by imbecile progressives, but not on our border.  The Border Patrol agents who have to do the dirty work say a wall is necessary, but what do they know?  Progressives always know best.  The Democrats now have moved another step away from good sense and sanity, and have declared a border wall, barrier, fence, anything that might actually stop illegals from invading our country, really, to be “immoral.”  That’s right.  Any attempt by the United States of America to preserve its sovereignty by taking steps to keep out undesirables, to have some control over who crosses our border, or to have any inkling as to who is in our nation, is immoral.  Not only immoral, racist.  A wall is immoral and racist.  A fence is immoral and racist.  Asking a question on a census form about citizenship is immoral and racist.  And once again, irony has eluded the Democrats.  Think of it.  Democrats have the colossal gall, the nerve, the big brass balls, to lecture us on morality.  When I went to law school so many years ago, I was taught that regulation of morality was a police power vested in the States.  Of course, Democrats don’t recognize federalism, or the notion that the States have powers forbidden to the federal government.  They were against State’s rights, until recently.  Under Il Duce Obama, the Dems stopped the State of Arizona from enforcing federal immigration laws.  With the advent of Trump, blue States have a new respect for State’s rights, the right of sanctuary States to ignore federal immigration laws.  These are the same people who denounced all attempts to regulate morals.  Mustn’t judge, you see.  No morals.  You should be free to do whatever you want.  Want to marry a goat, that’s OK.  You’re a boy who wants to be a girl, they’re good with it.  Can’t decide what gender you are?  Sorry, it was insensitive of us even to ask.  These are the same Democrats who just last week, celebrated a New York law that will allow abortions to be done by non-doctors, and permit infanticide up to the very time of birth.  How progressive.  Yeah, those Democrats are the ones decrying the immorality of a border wall.  Why?  Well, there’s no crisis on the border, there’s no emergency.  Really?  As this is written, illegal immigrant caravans are still marching north, and the Border Patrol just seized a truck coming in from Mexico with enough fentanyl on it to kill 57 million people.  No crisis here.  Trump wants a wall?  Can’t permit it.  The killing of innocent infants is considered moral by Democrats, but a wall that would repel fully grown criminals is not.  Somebody has gone crazy in Washington, and it’s not President Trump.

I’ve written about the liberal mental disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.  It causes once professional and prudent people to blindly attack President Trump, anyone who works for him, supports him, or exhibits any item in any way associated with Trump, like, for instance, a red MAGA hat.  The media Trump haters have forsaken any semblance of responsible journalism.  We knew the media didn’t tell the truth, but it used to be able to distinguish truth from lies.  It can’t anymore, and now the truth doesn’t even matter.  Lately, we are getting “reporting” that starts out, “If true …”  You know, “If true, Trump is a criminal;”  “If true, Trump will be impeached.”  It’s supposed to be the media’s job to confirm what’s true before it’s published.  Remember All the President’s Men?  The Washington Post hated Richard Nixon and wanted to remove him as much as today’s media wants to remove Trump, but they took pains to verify stories before they published them.  Not anymore.  All week we’ve been assailed by a story from the March for Life.  It’s the story of a group of Kentucky Catholic High School boys who marched against abortion, an elderly Native American banging a drum, and a group of African American protestors (or possibly lunatics).  The story run by the media was that the schoolboys cruelly mocked an elderly Vietnam veteran, in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.  If true, it wouldn’t be much of a story, except some of the schoolboys were wearing MAGA hats, no doubt a capital offense.  There was the haunting picture of a 16 year old simply standing near the Indian banging his drum.  The kid didn’t say anything, and didn’t do anything, so he must have been at fault.  The media denounced the schoolboys.  The Indian, one Nathan Phillips, told CNN that he stepped between the schoolboys and the African Americans, all duly ordained ministers of the Order of the Black Hebrew Israelites, because the schoolboys were about to attack the BHI clergymen.  If true, Phillips was a peacemaker.  If true.  The problem is none of it was true.  This didn’t stop the media from denouncing the schoolboys as beasts.  “A racially-charged frenzy of barely-restrained violence” committed by a “frothing mass of MAGA youth, frenzied and yelling and out of control.”  This motivated a Tweet storm from so-called “woke” folk of the media and Hollywood.  The schoolboys should be expelled, their chaperones fired, their school  burned to the ground with the boys in it, the boys should be thrown into a wood chipper.  That seemed a bit strict, even if true.  In addition, the liberal imbeciles once again missed the irony.  The same imbeciles who invite illegal alien criminals into America, no questions asked, and who favor releasing such criminals back into society rather than deporting them under the law, advocated arson and the murder of American boys who committed no crime.  The Phillips story wasn’t true.  Video evidence, which easily could have been reviewed before the boys were condemned, proved that the BHI’s cursed and taunted the schoolboys, calling them things like, “a bunch of faggots made by incest, racists, bigots, white crackers,” etc.  One of the schoolboys was black.  The BHI priests called him “nigger,” and told him the white men would harvest his organs. (Apparently he was thinking of  Planned Parenthood).  The leader of the BHI’s, one Chief Ephraim Israel, of the House of Israel, Brooklyn Archdiocese, admitted all this.  Chief Israel said the students tried to shut him up by loudly reciting Covington Catholic school spirit chants, “They started doing their chants, so I was cutting into them.  I called them dogs.  They sounded like dogs.”  How religious of the Chief.   The Chief was sorry that Phillips got in the way because he “actually interrupted what we was teaching, we had so much more to go.”  I guess we missed out on the human sacrifice portion of the class.  What the adult BHI’s were yelling at children are known in the law as “fighting words,” words calculated to start a fight.  Such words are not protected by the 1st Amendment.  The BHI’s are lucky they were dealing with polite Kentucky Catholic schoolboys.  You yell that crap at some Jersey high school guys, and asses will be kicked.  Just sayin’.  Those kids showed great restraint.  After the imbeciles learned the truth, they recanted their death threats, right?  Wrong!  The Tweets stayed up, and the school had to close.  But real religious leaders came to the aid of the schoolboys, right?  Wrong!  Father Edward Beck, a CNN contributor, said, “I think the students acted inappropriately.  You had kids behind them (the BHI’s) seemingly mocking this elder and smirking and laughing at him.  I don’t understand how the chaperones don’t step in and say, first of all, boys, get to the bus.”  Okay, they were waiting for the bus in the spot were they were ordered to wait.  Father Beck wasn’t done, “The hats that they were wearing, the so-called MAGA hats, come with a certain political agenda that, in my opinion, can be seen as anti-Catholic, anti-Christian.  Because abortion is not the only pro-life issue.  What about immigration and the migrants?  What about capital punishment?  What about the environment and climate change?  By wearing that hat, it’s saying you’re aligning yourself with a political agenda.  The students have no right to be wearing that hat.”  And there you go, that’s what it was all about, the hats.  No hats, no story.  The priest’s message was,” Yeah, we hate abortion, but we hate Trump more.  And, “What about capital punishment?”  You really want to go there, Father?  But for capital punishment, there would be no Catholic Church.  Think about it.  If Pontius Pilate had put Jesus on probation, where would they be?  If instead of Christ on the Cross, every church had a depiction of Jesus reporting to his probation officer, the Vatican wouldn’t have all that gold.  If Father Beck sounds like a Communist, forgive him.  He’s a Passionist,  an Order whose members are not allowed to possess land.  They rely on their own labor and on contributions from the faithful to maintain themselves financially.  Stalin would have been so proud, except he killed all the priests.  Oh well.  Oh, and what about Mr. Phillips?  He never was in Vietnam.  He joined the Marines, and worked as a refrigerator mechanic in Nebraska and California, before he went AWOL.  At least he kept Ho Chi Min from taking Omaha.  At the end of the day, “If true” journalism sounds a lot like starting a story, “Once upon a time.” In either case, what follows is fantasy.

The partial government shutdown has now entered its fourth week, with the Left-wing lapdog media constantly counting the days and measuring this shutdown (during which precious little of the government is actually shut down) against shutdowns past, and all the time bashing President Trump.  It is high time that the dispute was settled, and the President is every day being lambasted as the only obstruction holding up a solution.  The other day, Senator Mark Warner had a column in The Wall Street Journal in which he lectured the President on how to make a deal on immigration.  You get that?  Warner is going to teach Donald Trump how to make a deal.  Senator Warner preaches that he also spent time in the business world.  Apparently not enough, however.  Warner’s easy solution?  It’s all Trump’s fault because he has refused to negotiate or compromise, and he should do that.  I’m guessing that Senator Warner only watches MSNBC, because it seems he hasn’t heard that Donald Trump spent the holidays at the White House begging Congresspeople to come on over and discuss a solution, while Nancy Pelosi cultivated even more wrinkles on the beach in Hawaii.  When she finally did return, Trump met several times with Nancy and the loathsome Chuck Schumer to reach a compromise, only to be told that their position is “zero money for a barrier on the border,” nada.  Nancy Pelosi did make a counteroffer though, at one point grudgingly offering to let the President have $1.   This from a woman who firmly believes that our bloated $4.6 trillion budget is much too low.  So Trump went to the Capitol for yet another meeting after Chuck and Nancy demanded that he first reopen the government, and then they would negotiate a settlement.  The President pointedly asked Pelosi if she would reconsider providing any funds at all for a barrier after the government reopened, and she said, “No.”  And Trump’s the obstruction, huh Senator Warner?  Warner, of course is a Democrat, so he suffers from Left-wing delusions of rectitude.   I’m sure he truly believes that the Democrats’ attitude constitutes negotiation and compromise.  Here’s how it goes – While the government is shut down, you get nothing, shove it!  However, if you reopen the government, you still get nothing, shove it and rotate on it!  Some negotiation.  Some compromise.  The President stayed at the White House last weekend as well, still ready and willing to talk about a solution, but the Democrats apparently all went to Puerto Rico for the weekend to see Hamilton, courtesy of Left-wing lobbyists.  I saw a photo of our Senator Menendez on the beach with a bimbo.  I’m glad he got a vacation in, he worked so hard to avoid prison.  And here we are with late January fast approaching, lines getting longer at TSA checkpoints, and something’s got to give.  The President won’t simply fold, nor should he, and the Dems are too afraid of their whacky base to do the right thing, even if they had any interest in doing the right thing.  They’re having too much fun bashing the President for spending his own money to provide a variety of fast food for the championship Clemson Tigers.  Fast food for a group of teenage football players who consume 6,000 calories a day?  How racist!  But the shutdown needs to end, so it looks like the only way out is for Trump to declare a national emergency, and redirect government money to have the Corps of Engineers build the steel barrier.  The National Emergencies Act was sponsored by Peter Rodino of Watergate fame.  It was enacted in 1976, when an unelected Republican president occupied the White House.  The Act authorizes the president to declare a national emergency, which declaration activates emergency powers.  The proclamation of an emergency can be done by Executive Order, and must be immediately transmitted to Congress.  A national emergency can be terminated if the president issues a proclamation or if Congress enacts a joint resolution terminating the emergency.  Note this provision.  Congress has enacted a statute which provides for two and only two ways to end a declared national emergency.  Despite this, Democrats in Congress are vowing to mount court challenges to any declaration of a national emergency.  No honest court would touch it.  No judge is in a position to decide whether a valid national emergency exists.  In any case, I just told you the only two ways to end an emergency, as prescribed by the Legislature.  In short, no court has jurisdiction to hear such a case.  Of course, the Dems are not honest, so they will find a judge who will issue a phony injunction, which will persist until the Supreme Court decides what I just told you – it’s not a justiciable issue.  No court has jurisdiction.  An emergency declaration is far from a perfect solution, but it might be the only way out.  It’s been used many times, most recently by one Il Duce Barack Obama, who in 2009, declared a national emergency in order to enable U.S. health care facilities to implement emergency operations plans, to combat “the H1N1 influenza pandemic in the United States.” Now a pandemic is a deadly disease occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.  If you don’t remember surviving that pandemic don’t feel bad, either did I.  But no mistake, I’m not saying Obama was wrong to declare an emergency in 2009.  That’s just the point.  He had the discretion, and better safe than sorry.  So, if the possibility of bird flu is a proper national emergency, it seems to me thousands of migrants, including thousands of unaccompanied minors at the border, with new caravans on the way to the border, all of whom cannot be detained and cared for, and who could be turned away by a proper barrier, is just as emergent.  Remember the movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming?  Repeat after me, “Emergency!  Everyone to get from border!”

When you consider the respective positions of the opposing parties on the the current fight over whether or not to fund border security, one is forced to consider whether the two sides are viewing the same reality.  The President has declared a humanitarian crisis on the border, and is seeking $5 billion, which amounts to about one one thousandth of the federal budget, to build what is alternatively called a wall or barrier, which is alternatively constructed of concrete and/or steel.  The Democrats have flatly declared that no crisis exists.   The Department of Homeland Security has reported that illegal border crossings tripled from 2017 to 2018.  The President has told us that 60,000 children illegally entered the U.S. in the last two months, and we can’t handle them.  Democrats swear that illegal border crossings are down, so there is no problem.  Clearly, something is amiss.  Either one side is blatantly lying, or the two factions are experiencing two starkly different realities.  Alternative realities.  Physicists theorize that alternative universes may actually exist.  It all has to do with string theory and the peculiar actions and reactions of obscure subatomic particles, you know, all the stuff you can’t understand that the nerds on The Big Bang Theory always talk about.   A noted physicist has explained, “There are a couple of multiverses that come out of our study of string theory that create gigantic surfaces in space.  And what that means, within string theory, is that we may be living on one of those gigantic surfaces, and there can be other surfaces floating out there in space.”  You got that?  What that mess means is that it’s possible that there could be alternative, parallel universes in which there exist different realities.  In other words, Trump may be living in one universe, in which untold thousands of illegal aliens are storming our border, while in the Democrat universe, “all is well, remain calm.”  If you think that’s outlandish, consider this – CNBC, allegedly a news outlet, has actually “reported” that there are Democrats running around loose who believe that Donald Trump isn’t really the President, but that he’s just leaked into our world from an alternative universe.  No, I’m not making this up.  In February of 2017, CNBC reported, “There’s a theory going around online that CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) experiments have caused the world to shift into an alternate reality where Donald Trump has become president.   Trump theorists cite “the Mandela effect,” a phenomenon that occurs when large groups of people believe something happened even though evidence shows it isn’t true.  Some think more of these incidents have occurred since CERN was established, and suggest that its particle physics experiments are causing the world to shift into parallel universes.  People are recalling the original reality, which is why there is divergent thought according to the believers.  In Trump’s case, conspiracy theorists have cited “evidence” like his quote on terrorist attacks on Sweden and assertions that Muslims were cheering in the streets after 9/11, as memories which they believe stem from a parallel universe Trump used to reside in.”  As crazy as this sounds, it does explain how two opposing parties can view the same events and come to two diametrically opposed conclusions.  If the subatomic particles can create two alternative realities, then perhaps Trump and the Democrats are just viewing the respective realities that exist in their respective universes.  In Democrat land, there is no caravan, and illegal immigration is not a problem on the southern border.  Il Duce Obama, and Chuck and Nancy have told us just that, so it must be true.  In the Trump universe, there is a rogue caravan (which was formerly known as a mob), which broke down fences to enter Mexico, marched all the way to the U.S. border, and stormed the barricades trying to break in.  Those pesky subatomic particles must be creating alternative universes on TV too, because on CNN we’re told the idea of an immigration crisis was manufactured by the President (if he actually is the President), yet, on Fox News, we regularly see images like these –

Democrats wouldn’t lie, so this must be a parallel universe, right?  And the parallel universe must extend over the border into Mexico too, because officials in Tijuana are begging the U.S. for help with the thousands of illegals who they perceive to be fouling the streets of that city; illegals who really don’t exist in the Democrat universe, because they have told us there is no crisis.  The other day, President Trump went on TV and explained the scope of the crisis we face in our universe.  Chuck and Nancy then went on the air, presumably from their parallel world where all is well.  Americans haven’t been needlessly victimized by criminal aliens, and no barrier is needed, even though in January of this year, Congress voted to build a barrier on the border.  That was then, this is now, and if Trump wants it, it’s no good.  As this is written, the government remains partially shut down.  The President is demanding money for a steel barrier.  Chuck and Nancy (a truly Odd Couple) demand that Trump must open the government, and then they’ll discuss it.  Keep in mind that the shutdown is the President’s only leverage, and even with that leverage, the Democrat offer to Trump is, “Go pound salt.  You get nothing.”  Chuck and Nancy have gone full Corleone on Trump, “This is my offer Mr. President, nothing.”  And all over $5 billion.  Congress has budgeted ten times that amount to be given to foreign nations that spit on America.   Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.  But $5 billion to secure our border?  No way!  I actually heard Nancy Pelosi complain about the government wasting money.  If Nancy leaked into our universe, she ought to leak the Hell back out.  I don’t know if the alternative universe theory is correct, but I do know this – the Democrats are playing Americans for fools.  Their position is, who you gonna believe, us, or your lying eyes?  I choose my own eyes, unlike Nancy Pelosi’s, mine still open and close.

As this is written, the calendar has turned from 2018 to 2019, the partial government shutdown continues with no apparent end in sight, and the Democrats show no interest in any solution to the problem that includes any of the money the President needs for proper border security.  Come January 3rd, the Democrats will take over the House of Representatives.  They claim to have a simple solution.  Just pass a bill that funds Homeland Security until February 3, 2019, and give the President absolutely “nothing.”  The Dems apparently haven’t heard, or else don’t care that the President has made it quite clear that he will not accept “nothing,” and that the Senate has repeatedly told the Dems that they will not present a bill to the President that they know he will not sign.  The Democrat position checks all the Left-wing boxes.  By telling Trump to “drop dead,” the Dems energize their nutty base and their even nuttier contributors.  They also fulfill their greatest desire, to embarrass and attempt to destroy the President.  Also, putting off the border wall fight for another month will give the Dems and their lapdog media partners another month to hype new caravans, and to hope for the opportunity to exploit the deaths of a few more illegal alien children.  In fairness, you must understand that the Dems never thought Trump would make it this far.  In Democrat Crazyland, Trump would have been long gone by now.  The FBI and CIA would have ruined Trump and driven him from office.  That didn’t work.  The Congressional investigations would have proven that Trump is deriving the bulk of his income from Russian oligarchs, or from emoluments supplied by nameless, faceless foreign diplomats who are putting money in the President’s packet by buying pay-per-view movies in Trump’s Washington Hotel.  That hasn’t worked either.  Then again, by now the Dems expected head witch hunter Robert Mueller to have found the photographs of Trump kissing Vladimir Putin’s ring, or the deed to the $50 million penthouse that they say Trump promised Putin, or some such nonsense.  Even the Democrats must know by now that that’s never happening.  If the Democrats were smart, they would realize that their best course would be to make a deal with Trump to end the shutdown, such as it is, and to begin to set themselves up for 2020 by actually governing the country, and sending the message that they have a better plan than the Republicans, rather than by spending all their time trying to scorch the Earth around the President.  For the time being, Donald Trump is the President, and his wishes need to be respected and fulfilled, at least up to a point.  Trump is anxious to end the shutdown, and he undoubtedly will settle, if the Dems can see their way clear to letting Trump have something he wants for border security.  If they were smart, they would string Trump along for the remaining two years, demonstrate that they are responsible legislators who can be trusted to govern sensibly, and win back the White House in 2020.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the Democrats are not smart, nor are they in a position to work with this President.  Their nutty base just won’t stand for it, and their whacky Bolshevik billionaire contributors won’t have it either.  And so, the fighting will continue.  And so, the Dems will hand Donald Trump more ammunition to use in 2020.  And maybe, just maybe, the Democrats will manage to destroy their own last best hope of winning back the presidency two years from now.