Cotton: Senate Immigration Bill Is “Best And Final Offer”

Democrats are being given the chance to potentially add 1.8 million voters to their rolls in the form of “Dreamers”. That’s a nice offering. In return, they have to give up a lot to get it. So far, they’ve been sticking with the “clean immigration bill” talking point, which won’t fly. Senator Tom Cotton has some words for them

(CNBC) A Republican senator asserted Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s immigration plan is the only measure that could pass Congress.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas spoke as the Senate was scheduled to start an open debate on how to proceed.

Bipartisan senators will continue contentious discussions on the best measure to protect up to 1.8 million young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children and boost border security. A measure drafted by GOP senators including Cotton aims to mirror Trump’s immigration proposal, which calls for restrictions on legal immigration that Democrats consider unacceptable.

“The president’s framework bill is not an opening bid for negotiations. It’s a best and final offer,” Cotton told “Fox and Friends” on Tuesday morning.

President Trump has stated that he will veto any legislation that doesn’t include his immigration goals. And Democrats haven’t been particularly interested in debating the bill. Meanwhile

It does not appear any Democratic-favored proposals have the necessary 60 votes to advance. The GOP leader is betting that Democrats are willing to give ground because they have pushed for months to have a floor vote on legislation to replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

McConnell told reporters that if Congress does not pass a bill by the Presidents Day recess, which begins Saturday, the chamber will move on to other issues.

“We have other things to do,” he told reporters after a Republican policy lunch Tuesday.

“This is an issue we’ve been talking about literally for years,” he added, noting that GOP negotiators have recently “spent three months talking to the Democrats about this.”

McConnell’s giving Democrats a chance to tell their base that they gave Dreamers a pathway to citizenship, and all they have to do is protect the security of the U.S. from future illegal aliens. But, do Democrats really want this issue solved, or do they want it ongoing, in order to create election issues? Of course, is putting illegal aliens over American citizens the best way forward for Democrats?

Read: Cotton: Senate Immigration Bill Is “Best And Final Offer” »

Irony: Illegal Alien Calls Police About Someone Trespassing, Police Pick Him Up

How ironic is this?

(CNN) Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno and his family were in trouble, so he did what he knew to do — call police for help. About an hour later, he was in ICE custody.

Rodriguez’s detention on Thursday sent shockwaves through the Seattle-suburb and is now garnering national attention from advocates, warning the way authorities handled the case could make immigrants scared to call police to report crimes.

Early Thursday morning, Rodriguez saw someone trespassing on his property in Tukwila, Washington. In the last few weeks, someone had been repeatedly trying to break-in to his home and car.
So, he called 9-1-1.

Police arriving on scene apprehended a trespasser according to Rodriguez’s lawyer Luis Cortes.

After giving officers his ID for what he thought was “report purposes,” police put Rodriguez in handcuffs, his lawyer said. After running his information through the National Crime Information Center database, officers saw he had an outstanding warrant.

Less than an hour after making a simple trespassing call, Rodriguez was headed toward an uncertain future as he was driven to an ICE field office in Seattle for processing. His lawyer says ICE never arrived to pick up his client, so Tukwila police officers volunteered to take him to the ICE field office.

The supposed trespasser was not arrested, as there was no probably cause. Rodriguez, who’s trespassing on U.S. soil, was arrested. Rather ironic, is it not?

Of course, this article, and the starting point at the Seattle Times, has brought on much of the same old same old hand-wringing, whining about it being an administrative warrant (which, shocker, is legal) without judicial involvement, about why those big meanie police officers would dare do the job of law enforcement and involve themselves with a federal warrant, and the old canard about illegals now being afraid to call La Polizia. And, of course, the Tukwila PD has promised to change the way the follow the law to protect illegals.

Rodriguez entered the US from Honduras in 2004, fleeing violence his lawyer says took his brother and a friend. Rodriguez says his brother died from a gunshot to the head and his friend was found chopped to pieces. CNN could not verify these claims.

His lawyer says that ICE did apprehend him in Texas in 2004, but Rodriguez missed his court date — he did not have an address to send the court notice. Cortes says his client has no criminal history.

He illegally entered the nation, was busted, told to report to court, blew the date off, and has now been apprehended. Poor decisions have consequences. As far as it goes, ICE hasn’t released any details on Rodriguez at this time.

Related, Jazz Shaw discusses a case where an illegal alien complains that ICE is, get this, deporting illegal aliens. And, in this case, there’s a bit more to the story about one of these “upstanding” illegals that the media likes to yammer about.

Read: Irony: Illegal Alien Calls Police About Someone Trespassing, Police Pick Him Up »

If All You See…

…is a world flooded due to Other People eating meat, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Political Clown Parade, with a post on Michelle Obama’s new portrait.

Read: If All You See… »

Exxon Sues Conspiratorial Warmist

This is supposed to be very sinister

(Bloomberg) As climate-change lawsuits against the oil industry mount, Exxon Mobil Corp. is taking a bare-knuckle approach rarely seen in legal disputes: It’s going after the lawyers who are suing it.

The company has targeted at least 30 people and organizations, including the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts, hitting them with suits, threats of suits or demands for sworn depositions. The company claims the lawyers, public officials and environmental activists are “conspiring” against it in a coordinated legal and public relations campaign.

Exxon has even given that campaign a vaguely sinister-sounding name: “The La Jolla playbook.” According to the company, about two dozen people hatched a strategy against it at a meeting six years ago in an oceanfront cottage in La Jolla, Calif.

Sinister!

“It’s an aggressive move,” said Howard Erichson, an expert in complex litigation and a professor at Fordham University School of Law in New York. “Does Exxon really need these depositions or is Exxon seeking the depositions to harass mayors and city attorneys into dropping their lawsuits?”

An interesting point of view. Could Exxon be suing back as harassment against all those who are harassing Exxon with lawsuits and demands for documents? Really, what Warmists are upset about is that Exxon would dare fight back.

Experts say Exxon’s combative strategy — an extraordinary gambit to turn the tables — is a clear sign of what’s at stake for the fossil-fuel industry. So far, New York City and eight California cities and counties, including San Francisco and Oakland, have sued Exxon and other oil and gas companies. They allege that oil companies denied findings of climate-change scientists despite knowing that the use of fossil fuels posed “grave risk” to the planet.

See? It’s combative to fight back against those who are combative against Exxon (yet, those some Warmists refuse to give up their own use of fossil fuels. Has anyone seen those cities, jurisdictions, and states stop using fossil fuels?)

Plaintiff lawyers and legal experts contend the oil giant’s tactics are meant to intimidate while shifting the spotlight away from claims of environmental damage. And they say there’s nothing improper with lawyers discussing legal strategies together.

“It’s crazy that people are subpoenaed for attending a meeting,” said Sharon Eubanks, a lawyer who was at the La Jolla gathering. “It’s sort of like a big scare tactic: reframe the debate, use it as a diversionary tactic and scare the heck out of everybody.”

The projection is amazing. Cities and AGs like New York’s Eric Schneiderman have used their powers to demand all sorts of crazy documents, including lists of people and organizations that have had contact with Exxon. It was abusive. A witch hunt.

But, Exxon is a big company, with deep pockets and excellent lawyers on staff. And if they get the other fossil fuels companies involved, it could be tough for cities and states, and cost them a lot of money.

Read: Exxon Sues Conspiratorial Warmist »

Trump Budget Has Steep Cuts In Science, Especially For ‘Climate Change’ (scam)

Anthony Watts writes that this is what happens when you have the zealous overselling of climate science

PRESIDENT TRUMP PROPOSES STEEP, DEVASTATING CUTS TO SCIENCE AGENCIES

Washington, D.C.—The following statement is attributable to American Geophysical Union (AGU) Executive Director/CEO Chris McEntee:

President Trump’s proposed budget ignores the valuable role science agencies play in nearly every facet of American life. The proposal provides a steep increase in military spending and infrastructure but saddles federal scientific agencies with extremely damaging cuts. What the President’s budget fails to recognize is that these agencies provide much of the technical expertise needed to help realize his Administration’s policy priorities.

When we underfund or cut funding to science agencies and their programs, the implications reach far beyond the agencies themselves and the scientific enterprise. Data and applied research from science agencies like NASA and NOAA are critical to U.S. military operations and defense-related systems. Scientific research helps to create infrastructure that is sustainable and effective, and with the release of such a large infrastructure plan that invests trillions in America’s roads and bridges, we need a budget proposal that will ultimately protect that infrastructure from long-term impacts like climate change. We’re discouraged to see yet another White House proposal that indicates either the Administration’s continued lack of understanding about the crucial benefits scientific research provides to Americans or worse, their persistent disregard of the value of science to society.

We recognize that Congress ultimately sets the budget through the appropriations process and we call on members of Congress to set funding levels for science agencies that reflect their important research and programs, and provide funding that will move American innovation forward.

Realistically, how much of this is supposed to be done by the government? Is this a duty as laid out in the Constitution? Further, what happens when there is extreme mission creep, and the agencies become overly political? Anthony Watts wrote

My take: I’m a fan of science, no, let me qualify that. I’m a fan of QUALITY science. Science done correctly, without an agenda, without politics, and without the need to drive the next funding cycle.

A lot of this reduction is driven by Trump (and many others) getting fed up with science trying to blame just about everything on the universal boogeyman, climate change.

Just like the stock market recently, I see this as a correction for government funded science that has become bloated. We’ve traded quantity for quality.  And. there’s a lot of redundancy.

This is something that needs to be done in all departments, including the military. Stop wasting the taxpayer money. And especially stop wasting it while manufacturing data that Blames mankind for tiny changes in the Earth’s temperature while recommending all sorts of taxes, fees, and governmental control of citizens.

Read: Trump Budget Has Steep Cuts In Science, Especially For ‘Climate Change’ (scam) »

NY Times Writer Decides American Olympian Mirai Nagasu Is Awesome Because She’s An Immigrant

Leftists love pointing out awesome things from immigrants in an attempt to protect illegal aliens. There’s just one problem, which had even other Leftists pointing it out

(HuffPost) Bari Weiss, an op-ed writer for The New York Times, triggered an intense online debateon Monday when she tweeted about Mirai Nagasu’s historic Olympic performance.

Weiss captioned a video from the NBC Olympics account “Immigrants: they get the job done,” after Nagasu became the the first American woman to land a triple axel in Olympic competition.

The problem is that Nagasu isn’t an immigrant. She was born in California to Japanese immigrants and maintained dual U.S. and Japanese citizenship until she was 22 years old.

Many people criticized Weiss’ now-deleted tweet for “othering” Nagasu ― implying that because she is not white, she is an immigrant.

Weiss pushed back, saying she’d used poetic license in quoting the line from the wildly popular Broadway show “Hamilton.”

“Wow, this is utterly breathtaking in its bad faith,” Weiss responded to one critic. “Her parents are immigrants. And my tweet was obviously meant to celebrate her accomplishments. Perhaps you’d be more comfortable with an outlet like Think Progress making the same point.”

Here’s what that looked like

So, NYT journalists can purposely misrepresent Trump’s opposition to illegal aliens by saying he’s a racist anti-immigrant xenophobia, but these same authors demand a right to poetic license when calling American citizens immigrants just because they’re not white? Really, this is what happens when your political party’s whole belief set revolves around identity politics, and when you try and make a political issue out of everything to support your agenda.

Personally, I see an American. And, BTW, she was awesomely a Colorado Avalanche Ice Girl, helping to pay for all that skating

More awesome was that triple axle.

Read: NY Times Writer Decides American Olympian Mirai Nagasu Is Awesome Because She’s An Immigrant »

Good News: ‘Climate Change’ (scam) Probably Won’t Kill All Of Us

Are we going to hold a drawing to see who lives? Play eenie meenie miney moe? Or flip a coin (oh, wait, that would be racist)

Study: Climate Change Probably Won’t Kill All of Us

Due to a combination of prudence and morbid curiosity, a great deal of scholarly research (and journalism) about climate change has focused on the worst of all possible worlds. For scientists running climate-economic models, that nightmare scenario has a concrete definition: In 2011, such researchers established four baseline scenarios for the future of greenhouse gas emissions (ranging from the benign to the catastrophic) for the sake of facilitating comparable studies.

blah blah blah, BS BS Bs

And make no mistake: Even if near-term planetary extinction looks unlikely, humanity still has a moral and practical obligation to cut emissions as quickly as possible. The worst-case scenario may be less likely than we thought. But very, very bad scenarios remain almost certain. Climate change is already devastating and destabilizing whole regions of the Earth and increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather.

The fable never did say who is going to survive the Climate Games.

Read: Good News: ‘Climate Change’ (scam) Probably Won’t Kill All Of Us »

If All You See…

…is a world flooded by to much atmosphere cancer, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The First Street Journal, with a post on what the uproar would be if there was an “escape from black people” resort.

A little late on this, forgot to set the posting time before heading to work.

Read: If All You See… »

Gun Grabbers Are Pretty Upset That National Reciprocity Might Allow People To Carry Loaded Firearms

Would you carry an unloaded one? CBS’s 60 Minutes is Very Concerned over guns being loaded

The showdown over the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act

Of all the political and cultural issues that divide red states from blue ones, none is more volatile than guns and who can carry them.

Conservative rural states like Arizona and West Virginia allow almost anyone to carry a loaded firearm in public, while in urban states and big cities, it can be a felony.

But a piece of legislation quietly churning its way through Congress may change all that by making gun permits more like driver’s licenses, transportable across state lines. If you are allowed to carry a concealed weapon in your home state, you would be allowed to carry it in all of them.

Loaded.

Robyn Thomas, the executive director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, says forcing states to accept any and all gun permits would make the weakest laws in the country the new norm.

Robyn Thomas: Someone who lives in Nevada, who’s able to carry a loaded, concealed weapon in Nevada could now bring that loaded gun into Los Angeles, into San Francisco, and carry their loaded weapon, even though in San Francisco that’s not someone who would get a permit.

Steve Kroft: So this law would essentially usurp the gun laws in cities like New York and Chicago and Los Angeles.

Robyn Thomas: Absolutely.

Loaded (and, shockingly, the 2nd Amendment takes precedence over State law)

Scott Yarbro: For me, it’s just a way of life. It’s like when I get up in the morning and I get dressed, I get my wallet, I get my watch, I get my keys, I get my phone. It’s the same thing to get my gun.

But in most big cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New York, guns are a cause of fear and concern, not comfort. And law enforcement has lined up against strangers from far away places walking around their cities with loaded guns in violation of their own laws.

Loaded. Though Scott supports this.

The central tenet of Concealed Carry Reciprocity is that the Second Amendment gives people the right to carry guns anywhere they want but that idea is more aspiration than factual.

Steve Kroft: Is there such a thing?

Robyn Thomas: Absolutely not. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled on the Second Amendment in 2008. And what the Supreme Court said is that you have a right to have a handgun in your home for self-defense. And it absolutely does not include a right to carry a loaded, concealed weapon in public. And right up until the Supreme Court says it is your right, that is a fallacy that they’re pushing, in the hopes that it will become the truth. But it simply isn’t the truth as of right now.

Loaded. I missed the part in the 2nd where it says specifically that you can only have a gun for home defense (which liberals try and stop, as well)

But Tim Schmidt of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association thinks it should be.

Steve Kroft: The Bill of Rights doesn’t say that anybody could walk around with a gun in their pocket or a gun in their hostler– a concealed weapon. It doesn’t say that.

Tim Schmidt: Steve, with all due respect, it actually does. It says you have the right to keep and bear arms and it shall not be infringed. Telling me where I can and can’t carry a gun, telling me where I can and can’t protect my family and loved ones, that’s an infringement. Yes, that’s gone on for a long time in our country, but we’re finally fixing it.

Kinda the point of “keep and bear arms”.

Loaded ones.

If this passes, I might just have to get my concealed carry permit, just for when I visit the parents in NJ. Of course, since people can’t see a concealed firearm, it takes the fun out of watching liberals freak.

Read: Gun Grabbers Are Pretty Upset That National Reciprocity Might Allow People To Carry Loaded Firearms »

Warmists Want Olympics Athletes To Be Vocal On “Climate Change’ (scam)

This would be a fantastic way to get lots of people to tune out

Every Olympic athlete in Pyeongchang should be vocal about climate change

……

It’s not much of a leap from those two underweight snowmen to the Winter Olympics. Yes, the Games are big business. But every Winter Olympian’s love of their sport began with a childlike vision of fun. That’s the real reason climate change poses such a menacing danger to winter sports: Rising temperatures are threatening not just what we do, but who we are.

There’s even a word for it: solastalgia. A climate scientist friend, Elizabeth Burakowski, told me the term describes “the existential distress caused by environmental change, the homesickness felt when one is still at home. It is the unease one feels during those warm, snowless winters.” Today, many lifelong winter athletes are familiar with solastalgia — and a lot of everyday Vermonters and Utahans and Californaisn are too.

These are people who manufacture their own mental issues over a minuscule 1.5 degree F increase in temperatures since 1850.

Olympic athletes are uniquely positioned to sound alarms about climate change. Many of them already do: Ski racing legends Ted Ligety and Steve Nyman; cross-country skiers Kikkan Randall, Andy Newell and Simi Hamilton; and snowboarders Jamie Anderson, Kelly Clark and Danny Davis. They represent a new breed of competitor, focused almost as much on the need to save their craft as they are on the craft itself. Increasingly, their sponsors align. Burton, the company that made the U.S. snowboard team’s Olympic uniforms, is one of the most outspoken businesses about the perils of global warming.

But we need more than leadership from a few. The Olympics are an international stage from which athletes can demand action from the countries they represent and mobilize their sponsors and fans. This year, all the Olympians competing in Pyeongchang should be vocal in some way — every last one.

The Olympics are about achievement and execution, about pushing the limits of human physical ability. Pyeongchang, more than any other winter games in the past, will also be about other limits: how much humans will allow global temperatures to rise and the willingness of elite athletes to use their power, money and global platform to save their livelihoods, and ours.

So, people who just took long fossil fueled trips from all over the world to compete in the Olympics, and typically use lots of fossil fuels to get to the training areas and to compete in other competitions are best positioned to preach the dogma of the Cult of Climastrology? Really? It’s bitterly cold in South Korea. Think they’re keeping warm with solar panels and wind turbines? Nope.

As one person in the comments at the LA Times writes “How about the athletes be very, very vocal about North Korea’s slave pit of a Country?” That would be a lot better than all the fawning media coverage of North Korea.

Read: Warmists Want Olympics Athletes To Be Vocal On “Climate Change’ (scam) »

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