By Larry Wiwi for the Franklin County Tea Party

I won’t spend time here defending the wall, border security or the need to end illegal immigration as we have covered those topics thoroughly before and frankly the need is obvious to most Americans. Instead it might be insightful to point out what no one is talking about and that is the answer to the question, exactly who’s fault is it that we are having this showdown and related shutdown now?

It is clearly not President Trump’s fault since he is the newcomer here trying to deliver promises he made in the campaign just a couple years ago.  Broadly speaking it is the fault of the professional political class of which Pelosi, Schumer, the Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas and many others are part of and failed to resolve over many decades.  

However, the current showdown is clearly the fault of the last Republican controlled congress.  It is the fault of former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader McConnell and other prominent Republicans like the late John McCain and former Senator Flake.   The Republicans by and large ran on ending Obama Care and enhanced border security and they delivered on neither, which was a spectacular failure of leadership and incredibly deceitful to the voters who elected them.  The Republicans should have had both bills, border wall funding and Obama Care repeal ready for Trump’s signature by February 2017, but instead we have this self-induced political theatre.

Contrary to conventional thinking, the Democrats did not really win the House in the recent mid-terms as much as the Republicans lost it and the proof is pretty simple: Incumbents win re-election about 80% of the time in the House and if 40 Republicans would not have retired, the Republicans would likely have kept 32 seats and control of the House.  The Republicans are likely to blame for the current stand-off because they gave up the House.

Finally, after losing the House, the Republicans still had about 6 weeks to jam through the wall funding and Obama Care repeal and for the third time, they delivered failure.  None of this suggests that the behavior of Pelosi and Schumer is acceptable – their behavior is despicable but expected and because it was to be expected, the Republicans needed to act and get it done.  

Over the next few weeks or months we will likely finally make progress in getting the wall and border security we have needed for decades, and it will be to Trump’s credit, no thanks to either the Republican leadership or the Democrats.

Like many Americans, I eagerly awaited Donald Trump’s speech last night.  It was an epic failure.

It wasn’t all bad when Donald Trump addressed the nation yesterday.  He gets points for making the compassionate argument for the wall.  Chuck & Nancy got trolled into defending killers, sex traffickers and rapists. Also, Democrats looked hysterical “literally shaking” all day about the possibility of a national emergency.

But the government is shutdown with the administration under investigation and his surrogates censored on the web.

How much more fire does he need before he will strike back?  Some have openly called for his children to be arrested?!?  The media didn’t even want to air his speech last night?!?  Unprecedented!!!

The establishment wing of the Republican Party, people like Ben Shapiro, ridicule the idea of using a national emergency or executive order privileges.   Their central argument?  Doing so gives more power to future Democratic presidents.

This is a lie.

What we needed last night was Batman.  In The Dark Knight, Morgan Freeman’s character [Lucius Fox] shows Batman a sonar that can find anyone in Gotham.   However, he is concerned about the ethics of this surveillance technology.  What does Batman do?  He uses it to find the Joker and, to Lucius’s delight, blows it up shortly after.

That was the hero we needed last night.  We didn’t get it.   Trump had the opportunity to both use and destroy the machine.   He didn’t do either.

Life isn’t a movie, but that’s sort of the point:  parts of the country are becoming unlivable, people are dying, and it’s time to declare a national emergency.  If we can defend Syria, we can defend our borders.

You can tell me his speech was good last night, but you can’t tell me it was at all historic.  This could have been his JFK moment.  We’ll see what happens, but last night’s speech was more than underwhelming.

The ongoing struggle that US President Donald Trump is spearheading against the Congress to pass a bill securing $5.7 billion in funding for a US-Mexico border wall led the government into a partial shutdown on 21 December after the Senate failed to approve a budget bill.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has issued an ultimatum to House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats in the lower house stating that the budget deal will not be reached unless it includes funding for the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico.

The tweet comes after Democratic leaders reportedly left the negotiating table on 27 December refusing to discuss ways of restoring government operations. Pelosi told reporters that she would rather leave the government in indefinite shutdown than agrees to fund Trump’s wall.

To Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats:

No Wall Money, No Deal.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 28, 2018

(Read Article Here)