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I don't know why they didn't also sir, they seem to fit; The Waiting..........................Don't Do Me Like That......................Refugee...................................You Wreck Me

The TV news has wall-to-wall coverage of what is affected by the shutdown of the federal government, but it’s far from comprehensive. Here are just a few of the federal agencies whose services we’ll have to manage without until Congress acts: * Broadcasting Board of Governors * Chief Human Capital Officers Council * Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee * Foreign Agricultural Service * Office of Fossil Energy * Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control Office * Indian Arts and Crafts Board * Interagency Alternative Dispute Resolution Working Group * Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries * Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies * Marine Mammal Commission * Office of Refugee Resettlement * Office of the Pardon Attorney * Railroad Retirement Board * Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation * Tax Court * U.S. Arctic Research Commission * U.S. Board on Geographic Names * Weights and Measures Division Reminder: Rep. Nancy Pelosi: Nothing left to cut in budget 'the cupboard is bare' .

Ted Cruz Presents Bill That Would Allow States To Bar Refugee Resettlement It should be up to a state governor to determine if they want to allow resettlement of refugees in their state. At least, that’s the states’ rights issue that Texas Senator Ted Cruz and two of his colleagues put forth on Tuesday.

NICE WORK, ANGELA: Berlin Prepares to Admit Defeat on Refugees? Angela Merkel, who needs to sober up, has been held out by Hillary as a role model

Ten year olds don't have beards and deep voices. No WONDER our politicians banned age tests: Majority of child refugees checked are ADULTS Express UK, by Nick Gutteridge Original Article

Today, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates said she won’t defend Trump’s refugee Executive Order.She’s a holdover from the Obama Administration. And she’s only there because the Senate hasn’t yet confirmed Jeff Sessions as the new Attorney General. Tonight on CNN, renowned law professor and Liberal Alan Dershowitz said what he thought of Yates’ move. He called it a “mistake” and “holdover heroism.” From the video: Alan Dershowitz: “Sally Yates is a terrific public servant, but I think she’s made a serious mistake here. This is holdover heroism. It’s so easy to be a heroine when you’re not appointed by this president, when you’re on the other side. She made a serious mistake. I think what she should have done is do a nuanced analysis of what parts of the order are Constitutional, what parts are in violation of the statute, what parts are perfectly lawful. There’s an enormous distinction between green card holders on the one hand, people who are in the country and need to be thrown out on the second hand, and people who are simply applying to get visas. There’s also a distinction between what’s Constitutional, what’s statutorially prohibited . . . by lumping them all together, she has made a political decision rather than a legal one.“

Acting Attorney General Orders Justice Dept. Not to Defend Refugee Ban. Imagine what people would say if a Republican holdover did this to a Democratic president. . . . UPDATE: “You’re fired.” You knew that was coming, right? “The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States. This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.” Well, if she seriously believed it was unconstitutional, she was right to decline to enforce it. And Trump was within his rights to replace her with someone who would. That’s how it works. ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments: “Hysterical Facebook friends and insane protesters continue to bolster my confidence that I voted correctly.”

The reaction to Trump’s executive order has been enormous, so it’s useful to remember that the scale of what happened over the weekend was not, per this report: http://abc7chicago.com/news/18-released-after-being-detained-at-ohare-following-trump-order-/1725960/ A Department of Homeland Security official said the travel ban affected 375 travelers, 173 of whom were denied entry to the country prior to boarding flights headed to the U.S. The official said 109 people who were in transit to the U.S. were denied entry and 81 people were granted waivers because of their legal permanent resident or special immigrant visa status. This USA Today report has some more detail: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/28/trump-refugee-ban-blocks-7-migrants-boarding-ny-bound-plane-cairo/97181446/

Yeah Tom...........like you weren't gonna do that anyway............. Temporarily banning migrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen has brought help from the Muslim world. President Trump and Saudi Arabia's King Salman agreed on creating a safe zone for Muslim refugees within the Middle East, the New Indian Express (as well as Reuters and Bloomberg) reported. From Reuters: From the New Indian Express: Conservatives have long asked why America and Europe must take in refugees when their Arab Muslim neighbors have the money to help their fellow Muslims. Trump is trying to make it so. I read that the 'stars' are falling all over themselves at tonight's SAG awards to see who can "Streep" Trump the best. Good thing I have a Henry Fonda Western on. .

Well, if Obamacare wasn’t dead before, it will be after you see this ad. Check it out: ‘This is why Trump won’: Lena Dunham gets naked in new ‘ad’ for Obamacare I assume her post about the refugees will have her in stirrups........

Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees — Separating Fact from Hysteria by David French The hysterical rhetoric about President Trump’s executive order on refugees is out of control. Let’s slow down and take a look at the facts. To read the online commentary, one would think that President Trump just fundamentally corrupted the American character. You would think that the executive order on refugees he signed yesterday betrayed America’s Founding ideals. You might even think he banned people from an entire faith from American shores. Just look at the rhetoric. Here’s Chuck Schumer: "Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty tonight." CNN, doing its best Huffington Post impersonation, ran a headline declaring “Trump bans 134,000,000 from the U.S.” The Huffington Post, outdoing itself, just put the Statue of Liberty upside down on its front page. So, what did Trump do? Did he implement his promised Muslim ban? No, far from it. He backed down dramatically from his campaign promises and instead signed an executive order dominated mainly by moderate refugee restrictions and temporary provisions aimed directly at limiting immigration from jihadist conflict zones. Let’s analyze the key provisions, separate the fact from the hysteria, and introduce just a bit of historical perspective. First, the order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. Outrageous, right? Not so fast. Before 2016, when Obama dramatically ramped up refugee admissions, Trump’s 50,000 stands roughly in between a typical year of refugee admissions in George W. Bush’s two terms and a typical year in Obama’s two terms. The chart below, from the Migration Policy Ins: (AT LINK) The bottom line is that Trump is improving security screening and intends to admit refugees at close to the average rate of the 15 years before Obama’s dramatic expansion in 2016. Obama’s expansion was a departure from recent norms, not Trump’s contraction. Second, the order imposes a temporary, 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. These are countries either torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments. The ban is in place while the Department of Homeland Security determines the “information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.” It could, however, be extended or expanded depending on whether countries are capable of providing the requested information. {snip} However, there are reports that the ban is being applied even to green-card holders. This is madness. The plain language of the order doesn’t apply to legal permanent residents of the U.S., and green-card holders have been through round after round of vetting and security checks. The administration should intervene, immediately, to stop misapplication. If, however, the Trump administration continues to apply the order to legal permanent residents, it should indeed be condemned. Third, Trump’s order also puts an indefinite hold on admission of Syrian refugees to the United States “until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.” This is perhaps the least consequential aspect of his order — and is largely a return to the Obama administration’s practices from 2011 to 2014. For all the Democrats’ wailing and gnashing of teeth, until 2016 the Obama administration had already largely slammed the door on Syrian-refugee admissions. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444370/donald-trump-refugee-executive-order-no-muslim-ban-separating-fact-hysteria

EXTREME VETTING, HERE WE COME President Trump began to fulfill one of his signal campaign promises yesterday with the promulgation of an executive order addressing immigration from Muslim countries. The New York Times has posted the text of the executive order here. The order proceeds through a series of cross-reference to other laws that renders it incomprehensible on its own terms. Perhaps improvidently, I take the summary of the order’s operative provisions by Michael Shear and Helene Cooper in the New York Times at face value. See also Carol Morello’s Washington Post story on the order. According to Shear and Cooper, the order suspends the entry of refugees into the United States for 120 days, and Syrians indefinitely. It also suspends immigration from seven Muslim countries for only 90 days, while allegedly ordering priority be given to visas for Christians from Muslim nations (I don’t see the religious preference set forth in the text of the order). The seven Muslim countries are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Shear and Cooper want to imply that differentiation among faiths for the purposes of the order is unconstitutional. They write: “Mr. Trump also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: He ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.” The Constitution, however, only bars religious tests for office or “public trust.” (More here.) Might there be a reasonable basis for distinguishing among faiths for purposes of granting visas, refugee status, naturalization and immigration generally? Shear and Cooper don’t raise the question. Indeed, Shear and Cooper argue stupidly with the order throughout their story on it. They can’t help themselves. Information is to be gathered, reviewed and summarized during the periods of suspension so that policy can be conformed to the national interest of the United States. Indeed, the order focuses throughout on the national interest of the United States, as in this provision that will never be quoted in a New York Times story: You mean we aren’t already doing this? We must be out of our minds. You mean we aren’t already doing this? We must be out of our minds. Despite its difficulty, the order is worth reviewing in its entirety. The following provision, for example, should resonate with citizens of sound mind: With Minnesota’s ever growing community of Somali immigrants and refugees, we find the order hitting close to home. The Star Tribune collects critical comments from Somali immigrants without any reference to the, ah, special law enforcement challenges that they have raised — and continue to raise. The reform of visa, refugee and immigration policy implicit in the terms of the executive order are, to say the least, long overdue. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/01/extreme-vetting-here-we-come.php

IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ UNION PRESIDENT ON TRUMP BAN: I Don’t See It As A Bad Thing. “Palinkas said he believes restricting access from the seven predominantly Muslim countries that were designated as harboring terrorists under former President Barack Obama will disrupt sleeper cell activity on U.S. soil.” Jonathan Adler: President Trump may hire “only the best people” but he did not rely upon them to draft and implement his latest Executive Order. "Green Card nonsense was a bad mistake. DAN MCLAUGHLIN: Refugee Madness: Trump Is Wrong, But His Liberal Critics Are Crazy. ANYTHING TO KEEP UP THE HYSTERIA: Washington Post Solicits Immigration Sob Stories.

From the one and only Mark Steyn: Laws are for the Little People...................http://www.steynonline.com/7564/laws-are-for-the-little-people Just ahead of tonight's final debate (from which I shall be several thousand miles away): As I've said for years - on radio, TV and in print - for me the overriding issue in American politics is the corruption. In the Obama era, we have seen the remorseless merging of the party and the state - in the IRS, in the Justice Department and elsewhere. Whatever one feels about, say, Scandinavia, they at least come to their statism and socialism more or less honestly. Not so the United States. It's bad enough that Democrats aren't agitated about this corruption - but then it works to their advantage. Slightly more mysterious is why so many of my friends on the right aren't incensed by it. For months, conservative commentators assured us that, when it comes to straight arrows, no arrow is straighter than FBI honcho James Comey - non-partisan, career public servant, will follow the evidence whereso'er it leads; why, "no one in law enforcement" is "more capable of navigating through a political maelstrom" and any attempts to politicize the outcome will ensure that "Comey will resign in protest, and other high-level FBI officials could follow him out the door". All bollocks. Bollocks on stilts. Like everything else the Clintons touch, Comey's FBI is hopelessly corrupted - and certainly more corrupt than J Edgar Hoover's FBI, at least in the sense that Hoover was independent enough not to get rolled. The revelations of what happened reveal Comey to be a hack and a squish: he offered immunity to Hillary's aides not to facilitate his investigation but to obstruct any further investigation; he allowed witnesses to Hillary's crimes to serve as her "lawyers"; and he physically destroyed the evidence - that is, the laptops. {snip} So, to add to the corrupt revenue agency and the corrupt justice department, we now have a corrupt national law enforcement agency and a corrupt foreign ministry - willing, indeed, to subordinate national security and its own diplomatic policy to the personal needs of Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, if you get your news from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, etc, etc, you will be entirely unaware of all this. Which is the way they plan on operating for the next eight years. A small but telling point: Wikileaks' Julian Assange has lived in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for over four years. But not until he leaked against Hillary was his Internet cut off. Hillary, out of office, has a swifter and more ruthless global reach than Hillary in office on the night of Benghazi. And, should she win, her view of her subjects is that we should have the same information access as Ecuadorian Embassy refugees. In any society, the chief magistrate's first duty is to uphold the law, and throughout human history his easiest temptation, once in office, has been to regard himself as above it. In this case, the American people would be electing someone who, not yet in office, is already above the law, and way beyond it. That would be an extraordinary act, and Hillary and her cronies would be entirely justified in treating such an electorate with utter contempt Trump is an unknown. But, to channel Donald Rumsfeld, Hillary is the most known known in the history of knowns. And what we know of her is that she's stinkingly corrupt, above the law, and able to suborn entire government agencies in the cause of her corruption. Where do you think we're gonna be after eight years of that? Oh, and it will be eight years. The NeverTrumpers are saying, "Don't worry. We'll get it right in 2020", just like after 2012 they said, "Don't worry. We'll get it right in 2016", and after 2008 they said, "Don't worry. We'll get it right in 2012." Next time never comes. There are no tomorrows for the Republican Party, because, unlike the GOP, the Democrats use their victories very effectively. With respect to my former colleagues in the New York and Washington commentariat, I don't think they have any idea of how bleak life is in many parts of this country. And I don't mean Jimmy Carter-like "malaise" - a brief blip after three decades of post-war prosperity - but bleakness as a permanent feature of life. Perhaps I'm touchy about the corruption because I'm a foreigner and I've lived in countries with clean government. Perhaps I'm sensitive to the contempt in which a put-upon middle-class is held because I've spent much of the last year in wealthy first-world countries (France, Sweden, Germany) that are on the verge of implosion over their delusional immigration policies. But the indifference from influential conservatives to both the despair and the naked corruption is deeply disturbing. Think of what the last eight years have wrought - Obamacare, a weaponized IRS, six-figure fines for homophobic bakeries - and then pitch America forward to 2024. Picture the most absurd scenario you can concoct - say, a federal transgender-bathroom regime. Oh, no, wait, we've already got that. The left is serious about power, and they don't waste time. The idea that the most personally corrupt candidate in modern American history will govern as some sort of benign moderate centrist placeholder until the wankers who thought Jeb Bush was a superstar shoo-in come up with their next inspiration is utterly preposterous. Enjoy the debate.

Occasionally, people let slip certain words that define them. 'Generally' is one of them. Associated Press Obama calls Afghan shooting 'heartbreaking,' says he's 'generally proud' of troops Published March 12, 2012, Associated Press He's "generally proud"? There are times when there are no words..........but I will say, what an embarrassment our president is.

Biden admin: How could we possibly have known how badly the Afghan withdrawal would go? https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/05/25/biden-admin-how-could-we-possibly-have-known-how-badly-the-afghan-withdrawal-would-go-n471777

Report: Biden Still Not Using Defense Department Database to Vet Afghans with Potential Terrorism Ties by John Binder https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/27/biden-defense-database-screen-afghans-terrorism/

GOP Senators Looking Into Report Biden Allowed '50 Dangerous Afghans' to Enter U.S., Despite Serious Red Flags https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/05/28/gop-senators-looking-into-report-biden-allowed-50-dangerous-afghans-to-enter-u-s-despite-serious-red-flags-n571570

Oh, great. Taliban using abandoned biometric data to target Afghan helpers It’s long been known that America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer left behind a massive trove of more than seven billion dollars worth of weapons and other military equipment. This has made the Taliban one of the most well-armed military forces in the region. But there were other goodies left behind for the terrorists to rummage through. There were countless computers and other data storage devices. Some of these contained all of the personnel records of our Afghan helpers ranging from translators to teachers and general maintenance workers. Those records included all manner of biometric and personal data such as home addresses and the identity of relatives living in the area. Now the Taliban is using that data to track down the helpers that we left behind and imprison or execute them, and members of the Senate want answers as to how this happened. https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/05/04/oh-great-taliban-using-abandoned-biometric-data-to-target-afghan-helpers-n466980

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Now All the Unvetted Afghans Biden’s Handlers Brought Here Can’t Be Deported. https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/03/22/insane-now-all-the-unvetted-afghans-bidens-handlers-brought-here-cant-be-deported-n1568776

If Joe Biden Doesn’t Change Course, This Will Be His Worst Failure “The current humanitarian crisis could kill far more Afghans than the past 20 years of war.” By EZRA KLEIN https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/opinion/afghanistan-starvation-biden.html

Old man refuses to accept what the Pentagon says. Biden says he rejects findings of Army report on Afghanistan | TheHill https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/593822-biden-says-he-rejects-findings-of-army-report-on-afghanistan Biden's Afghan bugout keeps looking worse and worse https://nypost.com/2022/02/11/bidens-afghan-bugout-keeps-looking-worse-and-worse/

Jill Biden ? Commander in charge of Kabul evacuation: White House and Jill Biden were 'distractions' during chaotic time Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top U.S. commander in Kabul during the evacuation, is speaking out about the chaos that ensued during the botched Biden withdrawal from that country. He makes it perfectly clear that the “distractions” coming from the people in the White House, including Jill Biden, did nothing but interfere with the plan that was in place. It wasn’t just distractions in the White House, either. Pope Francis and members of Congress hit him up for special favors during the evacuation, too. Vasely said that the Pentagon was being pulled in different directions from White House officials, lawmakers, members of the media, and from the Vatican, too. People requested special favors as it related to helping get people out of Kabul and essentially competed for the resources that were available during the evacuation process. The priority was to evacuate American citizens first, then legal American citizens (like green card holders), and then Afghans who helped American military. That is standard priority at the Pentagon but favors were being asked at such a high volume that Vasely felt under pressure to take “certain forces” away from the rescue plan in place. We now know what Rear Adm. Vasely experienced during the evacuation because of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Washington Post. A 2,000 page declassified report has been released. The report includes dozens of interviews with military officials and the most detailed official account of the 17-day evacuation to date. As a reminder, the Taliban arrived as a massive force in Kabul on August 15, ready to take control. American military leaders were not at all confident in the Biden administration’s ability to manage the crisis. We know now that those doubts were justified. The long-standing practice of leaving no Americans behind simply didn’t happen. To this day, thousands of American citizens and green card holders are trapped, unable to get out. The same holds true for our Afghan helpers. They were promised the gift of coming to America after their service to our military yet the Biden administration turned their backs on so many of them. Most galling of all is when we continued to hear from the State Department that all of those who wanted to get out, got out. That was a flat-out lie. Blaming those left behind, stuck in Afghanistan, for their own predicament was always absurd. Are we to believe that the greatest military force on earth couldn’t evacuate all those who wanted to leave? The administration left many of them to fend for themselves. https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2022/02/11/commander-in-charge-of-kabul-evacuation-white-house-and-jill-biden-were-distractions-during-chaotic-time-n447881

Of course. Biden Administration is hiding $1 billion in payments to the Taliban DAVID STROM It turns out that the United States is still the largest provider of foreign aid to Afghanistan, and the Biden Administration is working assiduously and against the law to hide what is happening with that cash. AYFKM? The facts come the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). SIGAR was created in 2008 in the Defense Authorization Act because everything having to do with Afghanistan was corrupt and unaccountable. Congress finally decided that it needed an objective 3rd party to monitor what the hell was happening to all that money. Earlier this week SIGAR dropped a bombshell–one that clearly didn’t hit the media since they ignored it in favor of defaming Republicans. They flat out stated that the Biden Administration is obstructing and breaking the law: To Congress, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and the American people, I am pleased to submit SIGAR’s 57th quarterly report on the status of reconstruction in Afghanistan. The United States remains Afghanistan’s single largest donor, having provided more than $1.1 billion in assistance to support the Afghan people since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021. However, SIGAR, for the first time in its history is unable this quarter to provide Congress and the American people with a full accounting of this U.S. government spending due to the noncooperation of several U.S. government agencies. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which administers the majority of U.S. government spending for Afghanistan, and the Treasury Department refused to cooperate with SIGAR in any capacity, while the State Department was selective in the information it provided pursuant to SIGAR’s audit and quarterly data requests, sharing high-level funding data but not details of agency-supported programs in Afghanistan. This is in direct violation of Section 1229(h)(5)(A) of the NDAA for FY 2008 (requiring the agencies to provide information and assistance upon request) and Section 6(c)(1) of the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended. SIGAR has notified Congress of this matter Idiot me, I never for a moment thought that the United States would be funneling money to the evil and medieval Taliban, sworn enemies of the United States and hideous oppressors of their own people. But of course Biden has been shoveling cash to Iran, which is all about “Death to America,” so I guess I should have expected it. At a time when the media and the Democrat establishment–oops, I repeat myself–are screaming at the top of their lungs about how democracy is threatened by having an election and allowing citizens to vote–the Administration is also actively violating a law in order to hide their support for our enemies. That’s not me saying that. That is SIGAR. https://hotair.com/david-strom/2022/11/03/biden-administration-is-hiding-1-billion-in-payments-to-the-taliban-n507899 https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2022-10-30qr.pdf .

Former Recon Marine Lays out Biden Administration's Lies About Americans Abandoned in Afghanistan Joe Biden has made some unconscionable moves during his presidency, but abandoning Americans in Afghanistan at the mercy of the most brutal terrorist organization on the planet remains his most despicable act yet. Moreover, a former Recon Marine claims the administration has lied about it from the beginning. Chad Robichaux, a former Force Recon Marine and Department of Defense contractor with eight deployments to Afghanistan as part of a Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Task Force, says the administration lied to the American public when they said that Americans were able to evacuate after the Afghanistan debacle, reports Just the News. During an appearance on the Wednesday edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show, Robichaux said there are still American who want to escape the Taliban-ruled country: There’s Americans still there that want to get out. There’s 75,000 Afghan allies who are vulnerable to being beaten and interrogated for what they know about America and some are executed for serving America. https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2023/01/19/former-recon-marine-lays-out-biden-administrations-lies-about-americans-abandoned-in-afghanistan-n691051 https://justthenews.com/world/middle-east/former-recon-marine-says-biden-admin-lied-about-americans-being-able-evacuate .