The tweet above, an outright lie, is reproduced merely as reinforcement of the quote with the illustration. It’s typical of what Donald makes up as brief brainwashing assaults on the minds of the public (with always an underlying dig against Barack Obama, who took office in 2009 saddled with the major recession left in the wake of the Bush years).
Someone undoubtedly has told Donald by now that DACA—the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that offers legal status to undocumented immigrants who arrived to the U.S. as children—did not exist until 2012.
Mother Jones (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/02/donald-trumps-daca-tweet-gets-it-all-wrong/) also provides the following accurate historical detail: “Some quick background that Trump did not seem to have access to before he tweeted: since the early 2000s, several variations of a bill known as the DREAM Act, which was designed to offer temporary legal status to individuals who were children when they arrived in the United States, were introduced in Congress.
“It wasn’t until September 2007, when Democrats controlled the House and Senate, but notably not the White House, that the bill seemed to have any real shot. It passed the House and won a majority of votes in the Senate but was blocked by a Republican filibuster.
“ In 2010, when the Democrats did control all three branches, the bill was supported by a majority of both houses and President Barack Obama, but, again, blocked by a Republican filibuster. Notably, while some Republicans crossed party lines to support that version of the bill, the current top three House Republicans did not support it, and the current GOP Senate leadership cadre, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, voted against killing the filibuster that Democrats needed to beat to make the bill a law.”
Sahil Kapur also tweeted that on Dec. 8, 2010, the House voted 216-198 to pass the DREAM Act. All but 8 Republicans voted “no” (including Ryan, McCarthy, Scalise). But Dec. 18, 2010, the DREAM Act was filibustered in the Senate. Only 55 “yes” votes were mustered in the attempt to kill the filibuster.
The DACA program itself was created in 2012 when Obama issued an executive order to enforce the provisions of what had been proposed in the DREAM Act legislation.
MORE ON TRUMP MENTALITY—I’m tying Donald’s latest lying tweet to a recent meeting of mental health and nuclear weapons experts convened by the “Need to Impeach” campaign Feb.12 in Washington, D. C. President Donald Trump’s mental health is “deteriorating” and special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between his campaign and Russians in the election is edging the commander-in-chief closer to pushing the nuclear button on North Korea, said psychologist John Garter. The stress of Mueller’s intensifying investigation is “clearly driving him crazy,”
“What we need to understand is that for him, this also is pushing him towards pushing the nuclear button because it would solve all of his problems,” said Gartner, claiming that Trump has no empathy or concern for the people whose lives would be destroyed. “We are not in a static situation—we are in a deteriorating situation,” said Gartner, concluding, “As every day goes by, we are at greater risk of total annihilation.”
Earlier the same day, Trump himself sent a chill through many when he said he hoped that the U.S. would never have to launch its nuclear weapons, but that the arsenal is being modernized “because others are doing it” and that reducing it “depends really on what other people are going to be doing.” Not an out-and-out threat, but it shows which way his mind is leaning. He’s also pumping up drastically, in his proposed budget, the U.S. military—over which he exercises unilateral control. Word on the street is that he’s providing for some weapons the Pentagon doesn’t even want (as he sucks up to some major defense industries, tries to woo the public with job promises, etc. Boeing, for instance.)
I do feel he’s yearning for a war of some sort, of his very own, to cover his incompetence in various things and to engrave himself in history.
Another Feb. 12 panelist, nuclear security specialist James Doyle, said it is undesirable for a president to be “impulsive, easily angered or frustrated, somebody who seeks confrontation, has a high sense of bravado, or is vindictive”—all characteristics that Trump has been linked to.
Tom Steyer—the founder of the Need to Impeach initiative that has more than 4.7 million signatures demanding Congress to begin impeachment proceedings—prefaced the panel by explaining the so-called Goldwater rule, an informal name for a code of ethics created in 1973 by the American Psychiatric Association's Principles of Medical Ethics. The rule, officially called Section 7, deems it unethical for psychiatrists to offer a professional opinion on a public official without a physical examination. “I think there’s been a sense in the profession that Mr. Trump is such an extreme and potentially dangerous president,” Steyer said,“that they’ve gone outside the rule that stood since the early '70s.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the panel from Newsweek on the day after the panel convened.
TODAY’S QUOTE: Dwight Eisenhower was one smart guy, and I voted for him, even though he was Republican. The GOP was different then. In March 1959 he pointed out that American authority could not rest on military power alone. “We could be the wealthiest and most mighty nation and still lose the battle of the world if we do not help our world neighbors protect their freedom and advance their social and economic progress,” he said; “It is not the goal of the American people that the United States should be the richest nation in the graveyard of history.”
This comment remains particularly applicable in this Trump era. My thanks to Evan Osnos of The New Yorker magazinefor providing that bit in a story titled “Making China Great Again” (Jan. 8).
We might also take a look at one comment from Ike’s farewell address in Feb. 1961, 57 years ago: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” So here we are with Donald Trump and his repeal of restrictions on polluting industry (including his ongoing accommodation of Big Oil), his thinly disguised lobbying for defense contractors and his jacked-up spending on the military in general.
I still like Ike.
SCUM OF THE DAY—Feb. 15: “The morning after a deadly school shooting in Florida, Donald Trump Jr. liked a tweet by a conservative lawyer who claimed the FBI dropped an investigation on the shooter in the school massacre in Florida because it was preoccupied probing his father President Donald Trump.” Paranoia and self-importance certain reign in the Trump family. The FBI has its usual full plate in this day and age, and Donald Trump is merely a distracting gadfly buzzing about. Donald himself also tweeted: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign - there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”
In other “poor me” tweets during his most-recent frenzy, Donald blamed Obama for lack of gun control, in a vague unrealistic way, and insulted Oprah Winfrey just on general principles as she appeared to be catching the public eye in a political way. Makes one wonder who’s watching the store.
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