Nancy With the Running Mouth

So, Nancy Pelosi went on the floor of the House of Representatives last week to press for the House to do something about the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in the budget deal and used her status as House Democratic Leader to talk for a little while.  Well, maybe eight hours . . .  eight hours and seven minutes, to be exact. 

Yes, Nancy Pelosi talked for as long as people work in one day, earning her pay.  And I'm not going to ask for equal time by writing commentary on it that takes as long to read.  I am going to say this, though:  What Pelosi did was a stunt to show how vital and relevant she is.  It did nothing to ensure that DACA would be included in the budget deal (and did nothing to help the Democrats in the 2018 House elections).  House Speaker Paul Ryan said that Pelosi's 487-minute speech, the longest House speech ever, was impressive, but not impressive enough to include in the budget bill a provision on DACA that Trump won't support.  Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer belatedly realized this, which is why he agreed to a budget deal in the Senate that didn't include DACA after engineering a shutdown over DACA that only helped the Republicans in the polls.  People want DACA to be settled - but they also want the government to keep functioning while it gets settled.

Look.  The current DACA program expires on March 5.  Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has uncharacteristically made good on a promise and plans to open debate on DACA on the Senate floor this week.  Speaker Ryan has to start debate on DACA in the House soon.  Otherwise, deportations of young people to countries they're too young to remember living in start on March 6.  No one, not even Trump, wants that to happen.  Something has to give, and that would be the case even if Pelosi had not gone on and on and on and on in the well of the House.     

No, Nancy Pelosi did this to discourage Democrats form getting rid of here, not to encourage Democrats or Republicans to get DACA taken care of.  And she did this to discourage Ryan from getting too comfortable with the idea of being in a position of House leadership.

Not Paul.  Tim. 

Right, I gotta get back to the Winter Olympics . . .

There Goes Your Nineteenth Nervous Shutdown

The shutdown is over, and Congress managed to come up with a deal over the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) issue without involving Donald Trump, who had no idea what he wanted to do about it.  The government will be funded for three weeks - three whole weeks! - after Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York got Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to agree to discuss it . . . later.  While Trump chief of staff John Kelly and Trump adviser Stephen Miller retard and block any real progress on immigration reform. 

And Schumer trusts McConnell (below) to keep his promise?

That's like trusting a lioness to babysit a pair of lambs.

Schumer was supposed to get a deal on replacing DACA with real legislation once and for all, and instead he gets nothing!  He loses! And so do the Democrats, who, by the way, had public support for DACA but not at the expense of letting the government shut down. Which would have been suvivable if they hadn't caved.  

Ask McConnell for a promise?  Schumer might as well asked him for a pie crust.

You know, you silly Democrats, you could have avoided this mess.  You could have chosen as your 2016 presidential nominee the most liberal 2016 presidential candidate on immigration, one Martin Joseph O'Malley.  You had in O'Malley a potential President who was passionate on the immigration issue, who eagerly supported helping and getting legal status for DACA subjects, and who was ready and willing to get immigration reform done come hell or high water.

But instead of getting behind O'Malley (below), you laughed him out of the race, let your national committee anoint Hillary Clinton as your presidential nominee, and got a President who wants to avoid dealing with DACA and wants to stop immigration, come hell or high wall.  And you're still laughing at O'Malley?

You Democrats aren't very smart, are you?

I think I'm going to have a Pop-Tart now . . ..

DACA Caca

Trump got his henchman Jeff Sessions to announce that former President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for children brought into this country illegally by their parents was being wound down and terminated by March 2018.  Such individuals - called the Dreamers because they would benefit from passage of the as-yet unpassed immigration-reform Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act - are now in jeopardy of being tossed out of the country despite having been brought here as kids, despite the fact that they are now in college or in the workforce and are contributing to society, and despite the fact that they know no country other than this one.

Everyone, including I myself, agrees that Trump shouldn't have done this.  Now even Trump agrees that Trump shouldn't have done this.  Because although some liberal commentators have accused Trump of playing to his base of white men who want to make America more purely Caucasian than Sweden, he wants to try to find some way to get Dreamers to stay, because they themselves have done nothing wrong.  However, he believes - and to be fair, he has a case - that it is the legislative and not the executive responsibility to fix what passes for our immigration system. That's why he moved to let Dreamers know that he hopes to ensure that they'll be able to stay in the United States through congressional action.

Marco Rubio, Florida's Republican U.S. Senator and the son of Cuban immigrants, can relate.  "I know how difficult it is,"  He recently said, "I know how highly charged immigration can be as an issue. I know how difficult it can be to narrowly address one piece of the puzzle. So I’m concerned about those things."

So now it's crunch time.  Washington has to get this sucker fixed.  But don't expect Steve Bannon to give Trump a pep talk to get it done.  He's been insisting that the Catholic Church in America wants illegal aliens to swell their ranks.

Where's Martin O'Malley when you need him?

And by the way . . . we should stop calling Obama's program by its acronym.  No one knows  what it means, and DACA sounds like the capital of Bangladesh.  Also . . . the Dreamers?  They're immigrants, not Freddie Garrity's backing band. 

I'm telling you now . . ..