Reality's Angle

bogleech:

hey this article makes its points against the border wall using 100% nothing but conservative information sources, all links provided at the end, if you want to be able to shut down their bullshit claims in a way they can never argue is “liberally biased.”

Points include, and again all these points were discovered and reported by republicans themselves:

• Most contraband and “crime” entering the U.S. is smuggled via plane or ship.
  
• The wall would actually cost over 30 billion dollars and several more billion a year to maintain and patrol, astronomically higher than the supposed cost of all illegal immigration combined, though even Trump’s ridiculous 5 billion request is more than it could ever “make up for.”
  
• The wall would harm legal seasonal labor that the farming industry depends on
• Even steel walls are easily destroyed by floods and other natural hazards and it would be no time at all before the thing was in shambles
• There are thousands of properties that would have to be seized illegally for it to happen.
• Border walls in other countries have made no noticeable difference because they’re that easy to circumvent
• Most illegal immigrants are “overstayers” who were legal when they entered by the intended process. The #1 argument conservatives try to deny is confirmed in their very own writing.
  

(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)

justinspoliticalcorner:

Leo Vidal at PoliticusUSA:

President Donald Trump has a deadline of midnight tonight. If he doesn’t sign a bill providing money needed by key federal agencies by that time, there will be a partial government shutdown.

While millions of Americans look on with shock and horror, the president seems to be enjoying himself. On Friday he bragged that a federal government closure would drag on “for a very long time.”

Of course at the same time he tried to blame congressional Democrats for the potential shutdown, even though Republicans control the entire federal government.

He said that the Democrats would be held responsible if there’s no agreement to meet his demands for at least $5 billion of funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In fact it was just a week ago that Trump said he would be “proud” to shut down the government in the name of border security. “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down,” he said while meeting with congressional Democratic leaders.

Now, as the midnight deadline approaches, Trump is vainly trying to make Democrats appear to be causing the problem which he in fact has brought on himself.

If he continues to take a hard line, Trump will throw hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of work just three days before Christmas.

The House passed the bill he wanted yesterday but it is certain to be rejected in the Senate. Still, he called upon the Senate’s Republican leader to garner enough Democratic votes to pass the House bill and send it to the White House.

Trump tweeted:

“Senator Mitch McConnell should fight for the Wall and Border Security as hard as he fought for anything. He will need Democrat votes, but as shown in the House, good things happen. If enough Dems don’t vote, it will be a Democrat Shutdown!”

At the same time, Trump said he expected Democrats “will probably vote against Border Security and the Wall even though they know it is DESPERATELY NEEDED. If the Dems vote no, there will be a shutdown that will last for a very long time. People don’t want Open Borders and Crime!”

The Senate has now been called back into session to consider the House bill, even though many senators already left Washington for the holidays.

The Senate had passed its own bipartisan bill earlier in the week to keep the government running, with no money for Trump’s wall. Both bills would extend government funding only through February 8.

The impending government shutdown that’s about to happen is squarely the fault of Trump and the conservative media machine (FNC/FBN, Limbaugh, et al.) just so that he can have his costly and racist border wall funded.

(Source: politicususa.com)

(Source: saywhat-politics, via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)

justinspoliticalcorner:

Mark Murray at NBC News: 

WASHINGTON — Six in 10 Americans say President Donald Trump has been untruthful about the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, while half of the country says the investigation has given them doubts about Trump’s presidency, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The survey, conducted a month after the results of November’s midterm elections, also finds more Americans want congressional Democrats — rather than Trump or congressional Republicans — to take the lead role in setting policy for the country.

And just 10 percent of respondents say that the president has gotten the message for a change in direction from the midterms — when the GOP lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives but kept its majority in the U.S. Senate — and that he’s making the necessary adjustments.

“The dam has not burst on Donald Trump,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, whose firm conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “But this survey suggests all the structural cracks [that exist] in the dam.”

The NBC/WSJ poll — conducted Dec. 9-12 — comes after new developments in the Russia probe and other investigations involving the president, including evidence and allegations that:

• Trump and his team were offered “synergy” with the Russian government.
• Trump directed an illegal campaign-finance scheme to make payments covering up two alleged affairs in the last days of the 2016 campaign.
• Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort continued to communicate with Trump administration officials well after his indictment.
• Former Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen was sentenced to prison for three years.

In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump denied directing Cohen to make the payments covering up the alleged affairs.

“I never directed him to do anything wrong,” Trump said. “Whatever he did he did on his own. He’s a lawyer. A lawyer who represents a client is supposed to do the right thing that’s why you pay them a lot of money.”

Asked in the poll if Trump has been honest and truthful when it comes to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and related matters, 62 percent of all adults say they disagree. That includes 94 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of independents and a quarter (24 percent) of Republicans.

By contrast, 34 percent believe Trump has been honest and truthful about the investigation, including 70 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of independents and just 5 percent of Democrats.

These numbers are a slight shift from August, when 38 percent of registered voters agreed Trump has been honest and truthful about the investigation, and 56 percent disagreed.

“Last week’s Cohen and Manafort news clearly hurt the president — no dramatic movement to be sure, but incremental erosion in President Trump’s credibility,” said Democrat pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research Associates.

Also in the poll, a combined 50 percent of Americans say the Russia investigation — led by special counsel Robert Mueller — has given them “major,” “fairly major” or “just some” doubts about Trump’s presidency, versus 44 percent who say it hasn’t given them more doubts.

McInturff, the GOP pollster, says that the 44 percent without doubts is a “powerful reminder about the status of his political base.”

What’s more, a plurality of respondents — 46 percent — say the convictions and guilty pleas of members of Trump’s 2016 campaign suggest potential wrongdoing by the president, compared with 23 percent who believe the wrongdoing is limited only to those individuals; 28 percent don’t know enough to say.

And asked if Mueller’s investigation should continue, 45 percent believe it should, while 34 percent think it should come to an end — essentially unchanged from August’s NBC/WSJ poll.

(Source: nbcnews.com, via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)

crooksandliars:

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s racism became a focal point after she evoked Mississippi’s horrendous history of lynchings, calling them “public hangings” and used it as a gracious compliment to bestow on one of her supporters while she is running against an African-American, Mike Espy.

As The Guardian notes, “According to the Equal Justice Initiative, 654 lynchings of black people were carried out within its borders, dramatically more than any other state.”

Espy became the first African American in Mississippi to win a seat in the US House of Representatives since Reconstruction.

And she’s in a heated battle with him over Thad Cochran’s vacated seat that will be decided in a runoff on Nov 27th .

This video when viral immediately.

“If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row”- Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith says in Tupelo, MS after Colin Hutchinson, cattle rancher, praises her.

Hyde-Smith is in a runoff on Nov 27th against Mike Espy. pic.twitter.com/0a9jOEjokr

read more

I would love to be on the front row if Trump was being hanged for his crimes against our country.