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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday to search for ways to avert a U.S. government shutdown, but Schumer said afterward that disagreements remained as the clock ticked toward a midnight deadline to pass a funding bill.

Race traitors!
A new Quinnipiac poll finds that 73 percent of Americans want Dreamers to be able to stay in the US, 78 percent say immigration from diverse countries makes the US better, and 76 percent say where an immigrant comes from shouldn’t determine whether they’re allowed in. Poll Here
h/t Steve Benen

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Twitter finds 1,063 more accounts linked to a Russian agency accused of trying to influence the U.S. presidential election https://bloom.bg/2n01OeX

I have a feeling that if most of the illegal immigrants had a lighter shade of skin color -- blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan types -- there would be far less controversy and there wouldn't be a movement to expel them from the country. I didn't believe this ten years or even two years ago, but I believe it now.

Sure, why would anyone want to enforce the laws or regulate who enters the country unless they were racists?

US Defence Secretary James Mattis has said competition between great powers, not terrorism, is now the main focus of America's national security.

The US faced "growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia", he said, unveiling the national defence strategy.

In an apparent reference to Russia, he warned against "threaten[ing] America's experiment in democracy".

"If you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day," he warned.

America has been gripped by ongoing investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump 2016 election campaign and Russia.

Speaking in Washington, Mr Mattis also appealed to Congress to fund the military adequately and refrain from "indiscriminate and automatic cuts" to the US federal budget.

President Donald Trump is seeking to boost defence spending by 10%, or $54bn (£43bn), in his proposed budget plan for this year, and hopes to recoup that sum through deep cuts elsewhere, including to foreign aid.

The publication of the Trump administration's new National Defense Strategy signals an important shift in Washington's priorities.

For almost two decades - ever since the attacks of 9/11 - America's military focus has been on fighting terrorism, with counter-insurgency campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

But now there is to be a renewed emphasis on inter-state strategic competition - matching so-called peer competitors like Russia and China.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis is right when he says that Washington's competitive military edge is fast eroding. There needs to be investment in a range of new technologies that might provide the edge on a future battlefield.

But it is not simply a matter of spending more money. He pointed to the difficulty of passing budgets on Capitol Hill over successive years which, he said, had done more damage to US military readiness than any enemy in the field.

This is the first time the defence policies of the Trump administration have been spelled out in one place.

The threats listed are the same as under the Obama administration but the order of priority is different.

Formerly, jihadist militant groups like Islamic State or al-Qaeda were the focus but latterly America's former Cold War opponents, Russia and China, have reasserted themselves strategically.

"We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models," Mr Mattis said.

A summary of the new strategy was published on the defence department's website.

The three great nuclear powers have posed a permanent existential threat to each other since Cold War days.

In recent years, however, fears have risen of the once-unthinkable: a direct conventional clash, particularly between Russia and the US in Syria or Ukraine.

The new strategy recognises that "China and Russia in particular have been assiduously working over a number of years to develop their military capabilities to challenge our military advantages", said Elbridge Colby, US deputy assistant secretary of defence for strategy and force development.

"This strategy really represents a fundamental shift to say, look, we have to get back, in a sense, to the basics of the potential for war and this strategy says the focus will be on prioritising preparedness for war, in particular major power war," he added.

The national defence strategy provides guidance for the 2019 defence budget.

While the US was "still strong", the defence secretary said, its competitive edge had "eroded in every domain of warfare - air, land, sea, space and cyberspace - and is continually eroding".

Appealing to Congress, he said: "No strategy can survive without predictable funding. As hard as the last 16 years [that is, since the 9/11 attacks] have been, no enemy has harmed the US military more than defence spending caps and sequestration."

Referring to the current wrangle in the Senate over a bill to fund federal agencies temporarily, he said a shutdown would have an impact on military operations.

"Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down...over 50%, altogether of my civilian workforce will be furloughed..." he said.

"We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world and they cost money, those obviously would stop."

“Right now, a number of state laws allow a baby to be born from his or her mother’s womb in the ninth month. It is wrong. It has to change,”

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump took the oath of office and delivered an inaugural speech that is remembered mostly for being “dark,” as an instant media consensus proclaimed, or “some weird ****,” as George W. Bush remarked. The passage of a year’s time reveals that the speech was something else, too: impossibly grandiose. While those who oppose the president have debated whether he is criminally complicit in a foreign adversary’s election tampering, or whether he is mentally deranged, the country has lost sight of the standard of success Trump set for himself, which rests quite a bit higher than non-treasonous and dementia-free. Trump presented himself as a populist revolutionary who would reverse decades of decline. His speech reads now as a comic litany of failure.

Acosta asked, “How can it be the Schumer Shutdown when Republicans control the White House, the House and the Senate?”

Mulvaney smirked before firing back, “Come on, you know the answer to that as well as anybody. I laugh when people say that… you know as well as anybody that it takes 60 votes in the Senate… you know that?”

Acosta timidly acknowledged that he did, in fact, claim to know what Mulvaney was referring to.

...did you see this post that I made a while back?

For a while now, it seems like almost every post I make shows up on the screen twice. Anyone else having that problem? Anyone know why?

It's an a2k hiccup that happens now and then. Usually the moderators quietly delete the duplicate post.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis has said competition between great powers, not terrorism, is now the main focus of America's national security.