Spending bill is a giant FU to Trump, prevents him from using any of the new border wall prototypes

Reported here:

But, crucially, the bill specifically prevents the Trump administration from using any of the new wall designs it commissioned and tested in California last year. All money has to be spent on “operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017” — a bill Trump signed on May 5, 2017.

If President Trump cared less about his wall than about a wall, this wouldn’t be an issue. But everything we know about the president indicates that’s not the case, and that this is a blow to his ego — he reportedly upbraided congressional Republicans this week for not supporting it, claiming they “owed” him for his support for the tax bill and his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The bullying tactics do not appear to have worked. ...

Trump wanted 1,000 new ICE agents; he’s getting barely 100, and none of them are the field agents responsible for arresting unauthorized immigrants. (Instead, ICE is getting more staff for investigations and mission support.)

And when it comes to immigration detention, Congress isn’t just refusing to give the White House the 20 percent increase in detention Trump asked for — it’s rebuking ICE for overspending and expecting Congress to bail it out. 

h/t Mickey Kaus

Asian stock indices cratered overnight in the wake of Trump's imposition of tariffs on China

Jobs Americans won't do: Ruthlessly efficient Hungarian soldiers, prisoners, unemployed built 110 mile razor wire border fence in mere weeks for $80 million

Reuters, dateline Sarok, Hungary, Sept. 23, 2015:

Built in a matter of weeks by soldiers, prison laborers and cadres of the unemployed, a vast new wall along Balkan frontiers is a monument to the ruthless efficiency with which Prime Minister Viktor Orban has mobilized Hungary against migrants. ...

While Europe dithered over a collective response, Hungary took matters into its own hands, shutting off the route with a new fence along its entire 175 km (110 mile) border with Serbia, topped with razor wire and guarded by helmeted riot police.

It was erected at a cost of 22 billion forints (about $80 million), a rare example of efficiency in a country which built its last underground metro line ten years behind schedule at triple the projected cost.

The government says it put the military in charge of the construction so that it could act more quickly. By swiftly mobilizing state resources, the authorities also managed to turn the fence into a national project, immensely popular at home even as it is denounced by European partners. ...

In just days since it shut the Serbian frontier, Hungary has already moved even faster to shut the border with Croatia, which is inside the European Union but outside the Schengen zone.

A 41-kilometre temporary fence was thrown up within four days. Work is already underway on a permanent barrier, with machines clearing the land, fence posts driven into the ground and razor wire rolled out.

Equivalent cost for 2,000 mile US southern border wall using soldiers, prisoners and the unemployed for labor: $1.45 billion. Actual US estimates of the cost run north of $20 billion and of the timeline to complete many years.

Where there's a will, there's a way, but we obviously don't have the will, or the imagination, Trump included.

Senate passes massive spending bill in the middle of the night, sends it to Trump

CNBC reports here:

The Senate passed a massive $1.3 trillion spending bill in the early morning hours of Friday, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk for his signature.

Congress approved the more than 2,200-page legislation swiftly with a midnight Friday government shutdown deadline looming. The plan was released only Wednesday night. The House approved the bill Thursday afternoon by a 256-167 vote with bipartisan backing. ...

[Trump] reportedly threatened to veto it days ago, but tweeted his support for it Wednesday night after a discussion with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. ...

It would put $1.57 billion in new funding toward fencing along the border with Mexico and border security technology such as aircraft and sensors. Trump had sought billions more in funding for a physical barrier on the border after he promised to build a wall as a candidate.

Limbaugh predicts the omnibus spending bill will make Trumpists go wobbly

Well, they should since it's a total betrayal.

Hey Trump, last chance before November to show your balls are real

Veto the spending package.

Republicans fund Planned Parenthood and Sanctuary cities, but not The Wall

Republican profligates happy to spend an obscene $1.3 trillion, but none of it on The Wall

Fully-funding The Wall would come to just 1.7% of this gargantuan spending bomb. Republicans don't give a damn about border security, so I no longer give a damn about Republicans. Our new country isn't going to be great.

Facebook users have only themselves to blame

Bloomberg, here:

Reporters were calling this a breach, but it wasn’t, because users freely signed away their own data and that of their friends. The rules were clear, and Facebook followed them.

Like Obama before him, Trump congratulating Putin for his fraudulent win simply normalizes the acceptability of Putin's dictatorship

Like the French, we just shrug.

Laugh of the Day 3.0: Facebook outraged it was deceived!

Outraged, I tell you.

From the story here:

Facebook said Tuesday that CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and their teams were "working around the clock to get all the facts and take the appropriate action moving forward" regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

"The entire company is outraged we were deceived," Facebook added. "We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information and will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens."

Obama campaign 2012 hoovered up Facebook data too, but was lauded for it

So says Investor's Business Daily, here:

In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends.

According to a July 2012 MIT Technology Review article, when you installed the app, "it said it would grab information about my friends: their birth dates, locations, and 'likes.' "

The campaign boasted that more than a million people downloaded the app, which, given an average friend-list size of 190, means that as many as 190 million had at least some of their Facebook data vacuumed up by the Obama campaign — without their knowledge or consent.

If anything, Facebook made it easy for Obama to do so. A former campaign director, Carol Davidsen, tweeted that "Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn't stop us once they realized that was what we were doing."

More at the link.

Laugh of the Day 2.0: "Stepford wives cost me the election"

Joanna stabs "Bobbie"

Hide the knives, folks, Hillary's on the hunt!

Liz Peek: Hillary's latest excuse: Stepford wives cost me the election

FedEx package screening fails, bomb in shipment headed to Austin explodes at San Antonio sorting center

The story is here but is stupid for focusing on race and Donald Trump's supposed lack of an adequate response. The victims of the tripwire bomb were white.

Laugh of the Day: Constituent asks Long Island Dem. Representative "What's the Second Amendment?"

New York values, folks.

From the story here:

Rep. Tom Suozzi made the remark to constituents at a town hall last week, saying that folks opposed to Trump might resort to the “Second Amendment.” “It’s really a matter of putting public pressure on the president,” Suozzi said in a newly released video of the March 12 talk in Huntington. “This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly, because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts? What would you do? What would we do?”

A listener then blurts out, “What’s the Second Amendment?” The left-leaning Democrat says, “The Second Amendment is the right to bear arms.” The spectators laughed — some nervously. Republicans were not amused.

Joe diGenova is joining the Trump legal team

Joe long predicted Hillary would be indicted because the FBI had too many good people in it for it to turn out otherwise.

It turned out otherwise.

The story is here.

Obviously Trump softened his anti-immigration positions in August 2016 after Bannon took over because that's what the data analytics told them to do

Remember?

Trump turned on a dime in August 2016 after Bannon assumed leadership and it immediately got him in hot water with his core supporters after the Hannity Town Hall in Arizona. But it didn't matter to Trump. Trump knew that was the way to broaden his base because most Americans are forgiving and morally weak, supporting amnesty for the DACA "children". It didn't hurt, either, that softening those positions dovetailed with the libertarianism of the Mercers and their money. Trump was telegraphing to the libertarian money men of the Republican Party that he was in fact "flexible".

There's no there there, folks.

And there's no Wall, either, only a snake (remember the story of the snake?) who is willing to bite by trading a DACA amnesty for The Wall.

Spare me the bleating about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook: When are you going to get upset about Fusion Centers?

It's been eight years already.

Story here.

The Christopher Wylie story is fascinating but isn't really bombshell news: Ted Cruz used the same firm Wylie worked for

We reported on the story about Cruz from WaPo here already in December 2015.

The really hysterically funny thing about it all, once again, is how Facebook and its millions of idiot users are the real chumps. 

From the story here:

. . . Wylie offers a unique, worm’s-eye view of the events of 2016. Of how Facebook was hijacked, repurposed to become a theatre of war: how it became a launchpad for what seems to be an extraordinary attack on the US’s democratic process.

Wylie oversaw what may have been the first critical breach. Aged 24, while studying for a PhD in fashion trend forecasting, he came up with a plan to harvest the Facebook profiles of millions of people in the US, and to use their private and personal information to create sophisticated psychological and political profiles. And then target them with political ads designed to work on their particular psychological makeup.

“We ‘broke’ Facebook,” he says.

And he did it on behalf of his new boss, Steve Bannon.

“Is it fair to say you ‘hacked’ Facebook?” I ask him one night.

He hesitates. “I’ll point out that I assumed it was entirely legal and above board.”

Xi Jinping re-erected for rife

Story here.