We were suckered!

My favorite picture was not so telling after all.

The picture below was taken just a couple of seconds after that great picture of Trump looking into space



Everybody is laughing above.  She was apparently telling a joke.

At least Trump was still the centre of attention.

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Wow: Supreme Court Delivers Huge Ruling On Dem Governor’s Order Giving Felons Voting Rights

The Supreme Court of Virginia has ruled that Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s executive order restoring the “right to vote” of more than 200,000 felons was illegal and unconstitutional.

According to Fox News, Virginia’s highest court ruled on Friday that the Democrat governor overstepped his authority and should not have allowed tens of thousands of felons the right to vote.

In a 4-3 decision, the high court ordered the state to cancel the registration of roughly 11,300 felons who signed up to vote after McAuliffe’s April 2016 executive order. His ruling allowed many felons to vote in the 2016 presidential election, which happened to be a state Hillary Clinton won.

McAuliffe, a top ally to Clinton who campaigned with her in the 2016 presidential election, came under fire last month when an admitted pedophile and convicted felon announced that he would be running for state office. The felon was legally eligible to run for public office because of McAuliffe’s order.

SOURCE 

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Study: Immigration Costs GOP 5 States, 11 House Seats

Business donors’ demands for mass immigration have cost the GOP five states in presidential elections and 11 House seats in congressional elections, according to a new study by pro-immigration economists.

“In House elections, 11 congressional districts and 5 states in presidential elections switched to a Democrat majority” between 1990 and 2010, says the April 2018 study, titled “The Political Impact of Immigration.”

“No state and no congressional district switched from a Democrat majority to a Republican majority as a consequence of immigration,” said the report, authored by pro-migration economist Giovanni Peri, Anna Maria Mayda, a Georgetown University professor now at the U.S. State Department, and Walter Steingress, an economist at the Bank of Canada.

“If the study’s results are correct, it is very difficult to imagine the Republican Party will remain viable nationally if immigration continues at the current level,” said Steve Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies. Currently, the federal government welcomes one legal immigrant for every four Americans who turn 18 as it tries to spur business activity via mass immigration.

The study comes out as business lobbyists use a group of almost 25 GOP legislators to push GOP leaders in the House towards another huge no-strings amnesty for more than 2 million young ‘DACA’ illegals.

The GOP leaders — led by House Speaker Paul Ryan — are signaling their support for the amnesty and their opposition to an immigration compromise developed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte. Very few of the ‘DACA’ migrants are likely to vote Republican, and they are likely to bring in several million additional chain-migration relatives to vote for Democratic Party candidates by 2040. But Ryan has long been an advocate of greater immigration and he opposed the 1994 effort to curb illegal immigration in California via Prop. 187. California was once dominated by the middle-class voters, but is now dominated by a high/low alliance of wealthy progressive leaders and many low-wage voters, leaving the GOP powerless.

The study also argues that high-skill migrants — including the roughly 1.5 million white-collar guest-workers in the United States — push GOP-leaning college graduates to vote for the Democratic Party. The GOP’s loss of college-grad votes exceeds the GOP’s gain in blue-collar voters, says the report:

Our strongest and most significant finding is that an increase in high-skilled immigrants as a share of the local population is associated with a strong and significant decrease in the vote share for the Republican Party …

The first is Gwinnet County in Georgia, which saw its share of immigrants increase by 26 percentage points over 20 years. Immigration was mainly high-skilled (two-thirds of immigrants were high-skilled). In addition, the native population in 1980 was rather skilled. The county is part of a commuting zone that ranks at the 26th percentile of the unskilled-to-skilled distribution of natives in 1980.16 According to the coefficients in Table 7, column 1, the implied decrease in the Republican vote share is 10.2 percentage points …

The immigration patterns have also polarized the United States by geography, the report says:

It increased political polarization in the United States. Large urban areas, already exhibiting a Democratic majority, are those where the pro-Democrat effect of immigrants was stronger, but those counties were already leaning Democrat before. Similarly, the effect of new immigrants increased the Republican vote share in some less-urban and low-skilled counties that already exhibited a Republican majority in 1990.

This fall, President Donald Trump may test the study’s claim that high-skill immigration reduces the GOP’s vote share among college graduates.

His deputies are planning to reform of the H-1B program, which has ceded a huge slice of the U.S. information-technology sector to lower-wage guest-workers and immigrants from India. The program — which now keeps a population of at least 460,000 non-immigrant foreign graduates in U.S. professional jobs — would be reformed and shrunk by narrowing the law’s definition of “specialty occupations,” according to the deputies’ planning document provided to Breitbart News.

Unlike prior GOP leaders, Trump has periodically blasted and praised the H-1B program. In March 2016, f0r example, Trump issued a statement saying:

 The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that occurred at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements. I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.

If Trump promotes the planned H-1B reform, he would be effectively promising to raise salaries for white-collar voters, giving college-graduate Americans a pocketbook incentive to vote against the Democrats’ policy of encouraging immigration.

Amid the economic boom, white-collar wages have remained almost flat, according to Korn Ferry, a recruitment agency. The agency reported May 14 that:

while the job market is at the hottest it’s been this century, salaries for newly minted college graduates are virtually flat [in 2018] from 2017.

In the study, researchers analyzed salaries of 310,000 entry-level positions from nearly 1,000 organizations across the United States. Based on the analysis, 2018 college grads in the United States will make on average $50,390 annually. That is 2.8 percent more than the 2017 average ($49,000).

“With the 2018 U.S. inflation rate hovering just over 2 percent, real wages for this year’s grads are virtually flat,” said Korn Ferry Senior Client Partner Maryam Morse. “

But Trump only “flirts with” urging CEOs to raise white-collar and blue-collar wages, said Camarota. “For reasons that make no sense to me, he can’t bring himself to say ‘Higher wages and a tight labor market are my goal.'”

Polls suggest the H-1B program is very unpopular. An August 2017 poll reported that 68 percent of Americans oppose companies’ use of H-1Bs to outsource U.S.-based jobs that could be held by Americans.

Amnesty advocates rely on business-funded “Nation of Immigrants” push-polls to show apparent voter support for immigration and immigrants.

But “choice” polls reveal most voters’ often-ignored preference that CEOs should hire Americans at decent wages before hiring migrants. Those Americans include many blue-collar Blacks, Latinos, and people who hide their opinions from pollsters. Similarly, the 2018 polls show that GOP voters are far more concerned about migration — more properly, the economics of migration — than they are concerned about illegal migration and MS-13, taxes, or the return of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

SOURCE 

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Illegal Immigration Is a Major Crime Problem

A new DOJ report reveals that one out of five individuals in federal prisons is an illegal alien. 

A recently released Justice Department report reveals that an astonishing one in five individuals incarcerated in federal prisons is an illegal alien, which amounts to a $1.5 million bill every day to the American taxpayer. However, the greater expense of illegal immigration is not measured in dollars. The report notes illegal alien crime statistics from the state of Texas alone between 2001 and 2018 — more than 663,000 offenses were committed, including 1,351 homicides, 7,156 sexual assaults, 79,049 assaults and 44,882 thefts, to name but a few. Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan also said this week that “nine out of 10” illegal immigrants arrested have criminal records.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions responded to the report, stating, “The illegal immigrant crime rate in this country should be zero. Every crime committed by an illegal alien is, by definition, a crime that should have been prevented. It is outrageous that tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year because of the drugs and violence brought over our borders illegally and that taxpayers have been forced, year after year, to pay millions of dollars to incarcerate tens of thousands of illegal aliens. … Today’s report is yet another reminder that we must continue this [zero tolerance] policy and help fulfill President Trump’s goals of restoring lawfulness to our immigration system and ensure that immigration serves the good of this country.”

But despite President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration via his “zero tolerance” policy, the number of illegal alien border crossings has steadily climbed. And one of the primary culprits for this increase can be attributed to Democrats and their huge push for lawless “sanctuary cities” that essentially act as giant magnets attracting greater numbers of illegal aliens.

While Democrats and much of the mainstream media like to play up the plight of these illegal aliens as a justification for ignoring U.S. immigration laws, the undeniable fact is that major criminal syndicates have taken advantage of these sentiments to further their criminal enterprises. The drug trade and other nefarious criminal activity such as human trafficking exploit many migrants, often making them the biggest victims of illegal immigration. And sanctuary cities are only proving to supply these criminal organizations with more individuals to exploit — by falsely advertising protection to people who willfully break U.S. immigration law.

Regardless of how Democrats and the Leftmedia portray the issue of illegal immigration, it is first and foremost a crime problem. And the fact is that Democrats, with their sanctuary city policies, are guilty of aiding and abetting criminals. And as this DOJ report demonstrates, Trump’s rhetoric on the problem is much closer to reality on the ground than that of the MSM and Democrats.

SOURCE 

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Putin’s Success Masks Russian Weakness

Things are breaking his way. But if China is a tiger, Russia is a pussycat on stilts

By Walter Russell Mead

Vladimir Putin’s foreign-policy flair has both electrified and horrified the world for a full decade. Since 2008, Mr. Putin has partitioned Georgia, invaded Ukraine, and annexed Crimea. He has raised Russian power and prestige to their highest levels since the Cold War. He has muscled Russia back into the Middle East while inserting himself into America’s 2016 presidential election. He has also demonstrated an unequaled ability to weaponize information and bolster Russian power on the cheap.

Breaking the rules, in other words, is Mr. Putin’s specialty. But this year he seems to be taking a more laid-back approach. The Kremlin continues to spread disinformation, and its political opponents still occasionally turn up poisoned or dead. But as U.S. policy has become more frenetic under President Trump, Russian foreign policy has become more restrained.

In February a U.S. air and artillery assault killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria, but Mr. Putin’s response was low-key. In March he announced the first cuts to Russian military spending since 1998. In April he reacted with patience and calm when a popular revolution arose in Armenia against the pro-Russian government. And in May Russia stepped back as Israel bombed Iranian military installations across Syria, suggesting Mr. Putin agreed at least partly with the U.S. about the future of Iran’s presence there. As if that weren’t enough, Russia has joined Iran’s archnemesis, Saudi Arabia, in boosting oil production. This will help stabilize emerging economies that have been hurt by rising interest rates.

Don’t misunderstand: Mr. Putin hasn’t had a change of heart or decided to mend fences with the West. He is toning down his foreign policy simply because so many of his key objectives have been accomplished that his best option now is to consolidate his gains.

Ten years ago, the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were on offense in Eastern Europe. Mr. Putin feared that the spread of Western ideas into Russia would challenge his rule. Those worries are gone: A divided and confused West has given up its dream of pushing eastward, and both the EU and NATO are less confident and less effective than they were a decade ago. The West no longer endangers Russia. The real question is how much Russia endangers the West.

Mr. Putin is no Stalin ; he seeks to weaken the West rather than destroy it. From his point of view, the current situation in Europe looks promising: The U.S. and Europe are drifting apart. The gap within the Continent also continues to grow, as discontent mounts between Germany and many of its southern and eastern partners. Italy’s new government is likely to push to end sanctions against Russia, while forcing Europe into a new bout of navel gazing over the euro. All this favors Moscow without requiring Mr. Putin to do much of anything.

In the Middle East, Russia would profit similarly from a period of relative inaction. Mr. Putin cannot realistically expect to make Russia a hegemonic power there, but he hopes to replace the U.S. as the region’s primary balancer and diplomatic power broker. Because the Syrian intervention is unpopular in a Russia that still remembers the Soviet Union’s disastrous march into Afghanistan, Mr. Putin must carry out this mission on the cheap.

For the moment things are breaking Mr. Putin’s way. If Syria is to be a playing field for outside powers, the U.S. and Israel would prefer Russia be the leader rather than Iran. Mr. Putin can tell Benjamin Netanyahu that Russia is the best security against the Iranian forces on Israel’s border. At the same time, Mr. Putin can promise Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Russia will keep Bashar Assad in Damascus and the U.S. out.

Despite Mr. Putin’s successes, Russia remains weak, and its leverage over other nations is limited. China can woo its neighbors with multibillion-dollar projects like its “One Belt, One Road” trade initiative. Russia has much less to offer: If China is a tiger, Russia is a pussycat on stilts. Mr. Putin can obstruct Germany’s faltering European project, but he lacks the resources to offer an alternative. In the Middle East, the Kremlin’s position depends on American forbearance. If President Trump decides to make opposing the Assad regime a crucial part of his anti-Iran strategy, Mr. Putin may have to stand by and watch his client fall.

Meanwhile, developments at home counsel restraint as well. While Mr. Putin’s string of dramatic foreign-policy successes has shored up his domestic popularity, Russia’s sclerotic economy and corrupt social order ensure that the foundations of his power remain weak. Mr. Putin has made Russia great again on the international stage, but the Russian people would rather see him use that daring and finesse to improve the situation at home

SOURCE 

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