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Thursday, Dec. 28, 2017
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
Won’t be long now --- 64 days to start of Spring Training --- Go Red Sox
Happy Birthday to Arthur Lauzier --- 31 and strong
Random Drive-By Muthings
There are a pair of jewels living among us in southern Nevada: Bobby and Sandy Ellis. If you missed this heart-warming story in the RJ on Christmas day, give it a read. And then try telling me these folks don’t deserve a “yuge” tax cut.
I’m reliably told the coal Santa delivered to Hillary Clinton this year came from a “clean coal” mine in West Virginia. Yes, West Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus!
The headline in the Las Vegas Review-Journal yesterday declared, “Shoppers spending at a pace not seen since recession.” Hmm, I wonder what’s changed this past year to cause that?
Breitbart News reports that more than 1.3 million people dropped off the food stamp rolls in 2017. Hmm, I wonder what’s changed this past year to cause that?
So attendance and viewership of NFL games is way down this year and “U.S. movies expect 22 year low in ticket sales.” Hmm, I wonder what’s changed this past year to cause that?
After the vast majority of United Nations members voted against the United States over President Donald Trump’s decision to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced today that the U.S. is cutting funding to the organization by $285 million.
Actions are finally having consequences again. Go Nikki, go!
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) says President Trump’s packed rallies reflect the “spasms of a dying party."
That “dying party” now controls the White House, the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, the majority of governorships and the majority of state Legislatures.
You can bet the Democrats wish their party was “dying” like that.
Fresh off of offering a $2 million bribe each to Susan Collins(R-ME) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) if they’d vote against President Trump’s tax cut, foul-mouthed militant liberal Rosie O’Donnell tweeted to House Speaker Paul Ryan on Christmas Eve, “u will go straight to hell u screwed up fake altar boy.”
She seems nice.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) bumped a 63-year-old teacher out of her 1st class seat on a United Airlines flight last week - and United let her get away with it. "United knows she will play the race card if she isn't treated like royalty,” the press reported, “so they just give in."
So much for “white privilege.”
Breitbart News reported today that “A Democratic congressional candidate in Virginia (Shaun Brown) has been indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and theft for allegedly stealing government funds ($803,000) from a school nutrition program in 2012.”
Brown is black, so don’t expect to see her story on CNN or other “fake news” outlets.
Have you ever noticed that the mainstream media only seems to focus on the “good” DREAMers (children of illegal aliens) and never the violent, drug-dealing, murdering ones? I wonder why that is?
Nevada Democrat gubernatorial candidate Steve Sisolak sent an email out today urging people to sign an online birthday card to…himself. Not exactly his social media team’s finest hour.
Mexico maelstrom: how the drug violence got so bad
11 years since the government launched a crackdown on cartels, violence continues, rule of law is elusive and accusations of human rights abuses abound
Mexico maelstrom: how the drug violence got so bad
11 years since the government launched a crackdown on cartels, violence
Sofía, a medical assistant in Reynosa, a scruffy border city in northern Mexico, has a regular morning routine.
She wakes at 6am and readies her son for preschool; then she reviews her social media feeds for news of the latest murders.
Updates come via WhatsApp messages from friends and family: “There was a gun battle on X street”, “They found a body in Y neighbourhood”, “Avoid Z”.
In Mexico today, choosing your route to work can be a matter of life or death, but Sofía compares the daily drill to checking the weather on the way out the door. “It doesn’t rain water here,” she said. “It rains lead.”
It is 11 years since the then president Felipe Calderón launched a militarised crackdown on drug cartels deploying thousands of soldiers and promising an end to the violence and impunity. But the bloodletting continues, the rule of law remains elusive and accusations of human rights abuses by state security forces abound.
All the while, Mexico continues to race past a series a grim milestones: more than 200,000 dead and an estimated 30,000 missing, more than 850 clandestine graves unearthed. This year is set to be the country’s bloodiest since the government started releasing crime figures in 1997, with about 27,000 murders in the past 12 months.
Some of the worst violence in recent years has struck Reynosa and the surrounding state of Tamaulipas, which sits squeezed against the Gulf coast and the US border.
Once in a while, a particularly terrible incident here will make news around the world, such as the murder of Miriam Rodríguez, an activist for families of missing people, who was shot dead in her home on Mother’s Day.
But most crimes are not even reported in the local papers: journalists censor themselves to stay alive and drug cartels dictate press coverage.
“We don’t publish cartel and crime news in order to protect our journalists,” said one local news director, whose media outlet has been attacked by cartel gunmen. Eight journalists were murdered in Mexico in 2017, making it the most dangerous country for the press after Syria.
The information vacuum is filled by social media where bloody photographs of crime scenes and breaking news alerts on cartel shootouts are shared on anonymous accounts.
In Reynosa, violence has become a constant strand in everyday life. Morning commutes are held up by gun battles; movie theatres lock the doors if a shootout erupts during a screening. More than 90% of residents feel unsafe in the city, according to a September survey by the state statistics service.
Signs of the drug war are everywhere: trees and walls along the main boulevard are pockmarked with bullet holes. Drug dealers can be seen loafing on abandoned lots; every so often, rival convoys of gunmen battle on the streets.
Video cameras look down from rooftops; spies are all around. “They have eyes everywhere,” said one woman. “It could be the government or the cartels.”
The violence here first erupted around 2010 when the the Gulf cartel’s armed wing – a group of former soldiers known as Los Zetas – turned on their masters.
Since then, wave after wave of conflict has scorched through the state as rival factions emerge and collapse.
Fighting erupts over trafficking routes and the growing local drug markets, but state forces are also implicated: earlier this month, soldiers killed seven people, including two women, in what was described as a “confrontation”.
Relatives and friends of four people killed in a clash with soldiers participate in a funeral mass in Palmarito Tochapan, Puebla, on 7 May 2017. Photograph: Jose Castanares/AFP/Getty Images
Crime hit such alarming levels this year that the local maquiladora industry – which pulls thousands to Reynosa every year to work in its export factories – warned that companies might be forced to relocate.
Amid the mayhem, ordinary life continues: shopping malls fill with families trying to escape the oppressive heat. Cars full of young people cruise the streets at night, banda music blaring from open windows.
“Life can’t stop. We have to get out and enjoy ourselves a little,” said Alonso de León, a local caterer. But he added: “The problem affecting us in Tamaulipas is the shootouts, this violence – in any other country this would be called terrorism.”
The government bristles at any suggestion that the country is at war. When the International Institute for Strategic Studies ranked Mexico as second-deadliest country in the world – ahead of warzones such as Afghanistan and Yemen – the foreign ministry responded angrily, pointing to higher murder rates in Brazil and Venezuela.
War or not, the bodycount keeps climbing.
And the violence is spreading: tourist areas have seen shootouts and decapitations, and even the capital has seen confrontations with armed groups. Earlier this month, the bodies of six men were found hanging from bridges in the resort city of Los Cabos.
All of which has been disastrous for the image of President Enrique Peña Nieto who took office in 2012 with an ambitious agenda to push through structural reforms and promote Mexico as an emerging economy.
Fighting crime seemed an afterthought.
“He thought that security issues in Mexico were a problem of perception so he embraced a policy of silence,” said Viridiana Ríos, scholar at the Wilson Centre in Washington.
Peña Nieto’s government maintained the military focus of the drug war, and continued to target cartel kingpins. But analysts question the strategy, saying that it shatters larger criminal empires but leaves smaller – often more violent – factions fighting for the spoils.
Breaking up the cartels also has the perverse effect of encouraging crime groups to diversify, said Brian J Phillips, professor at the Centre for Teaching and Research in Economics.
“The new groups are more likely to raise money by kidnapping or extortion since that doesn’t require the logistics of drug trafficking,” he said. “And as long as demand exists in the USA, and supply is in or passing through Mexico, new criminal organisations will appear.”
Mexico after El Chapo:
When the country’s most-wanted crime boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was recaptured last year, Peña Nieto tweeted “Mission accomplished” but even that success has not caused any measurable reduction in crime: Guzmán’s extradition to the United States in January triggered a fresh wave of violence in his home state of Sinaloa.
Meanwhile rivals such as the Jalisco New Generation cartel – a fast-growing organisation specialising in methamphetamines and excessive violence – moved in on Sinaloa trafficking territories along the Pacific coast.
And the liberalisation of marijuana laws in some US states has prompted some farmers to switch to opium poppies, prompting fresh conflict around the heroin trade.
But despite the worsening violence, there has been little serious consideration of any fresh approaches. Earlier this month, Andrés Manuel López Obrador – the frontrunner in the 2018 presidential election – was widely condemned for floating a possible amnesty for criminals.
The proposal drew comparisons with the pax mafiosa before more than 70 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) ended in 2000, in which politicians turned a blind eye to drug-dealing in return for peace.
A woman cries over the corpse of her murdered family member while forensic personnel work at the scene of the crime at a shopping center in Acapulco, Guerrero, on 4 January 2017. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
But analysts say even that would not work nowadays as the drug cartels have splintered.
“It’s a useless endeavour, given the broken criminal landscape,” said security analyst Jorge Kawas. “There’s no group of leaders who can be summoned to discuss stopping the violence.”
Politicians are nonetheless still perceived as allying themselves with criminals –especially during costly election campaigns.
“Mexico cannot stop dirty money going into the political system,” said Edgardo Buscaglia, an organised crime expert at Columbia University. “That’s the key to understanding why violence has increased in Mexico.”
Such accusations are all too familiar in Tamaulipas, where two of the past three governors have been indicted in US courts on drug and organised crime charges.
Meanwhile, police departments are dilapidated, dispirited, corrupt and underfunded as state and national politicians pass on security responsibilities on the armed forces.
Earlier this month, congress rammed through a controversial security law cementing the role of the military in the drug war – despite mounting accusations of human rights abuses committed by troops and marines.
In Tamaulipas, residents express exasperation with the flailing government response. But few ask too many questions about the violence around them: they just want the killing to end.
“I don’t care about organised crime,” said one woman, known online as Loba, or She-wolf. “They can traffic all the drugs they want so long as they don’t mess with ordinary people.”
Loba is one of the social media activists who report on cartel violence via Twitter and Facebook. It’s a perilous undertaking: at least two citizen journalists in Tamaulipas have been killed, and Loba herself was kidnapped by the Zetas in 2011 and held for 12 days before her family paid a £10,000 ($13,500) ransom.
When asked why she runs such risks, Loba answered: “Perhaps this can save someone from being shot.”
FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER WISHES DEATH ON REPUBLICANS
Deputy National Security Adviser for now retired President Obama, Ben Rhodes stated on twitter that he was looking forward to seeing some very big republicans in the obituary after a photo surfaced of them holding their thumbs up.
“I hope this is the photo they use on the front page of the Times on the day Trump is indicted,” said a former Obama adviser.
“And alongside the obits for Ryan, McConnell, and Pence,” Rhodes added.
This caused severe backlash on the internet.
Change in Border Guard Behavior Means NK Collapse Could Be Closer Than We Think
BY JOHN FALKENBERG
Last month, the world saw an extremely well-documented flight by a North Korean soldier from his home country to the South. He was shot at by his former comrades, and severely wounded.
More recently, however, another defector made the dash across the DMZ and the elite troops meant to protect the most isolated nation on earth from southern invaders gave a reaction that is even more telling, and possibly indicative of major change to come.
At the time of the defection, which took place Thursday, according to the U.K. Daily Mail, the elite guards of dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime did nothing.
Not a single shot was fired, and according to writer Don Surber, such mild reaction could well be indicative of major change ahead.
Not a single shot was fired, and according to writer Don Surber, such mild reaction could well be indicative of major change ahead.
“I ask this because it seems like Kim Jong Un’s most elite troops — the ones he places along the border with South Korea — no longer protect that border,” he continued.
“If people figure that out, they will start walking south by the dozen, then hundreds, then thousands. We saw that happen in 1989 when East Germans began crossing the Austro-Hungarian border to freedom unmolested.
“Two years later, the Soviet Union — which had survived World War II — was no more.”
What followed then could well follow now. North Korea certainly doesn’t possess the collective will of Great Patriotic War-era Russia.
This man isn’t the only one to escape peacefully month, either.
As The Daily Mail reports, two North Korean fisherman were found requesting asylum in waters off South Korea.
It’s worth pointing out that the most recent defector escaped under cover of fog. Also, the North Koreans did mount a search for the man — and drew warning shots from South Korea in the process. But there’s no getting around the fact that the defection took place without injury to the defector. And that can’t make the dictatorship in Pyonyang very happy.
But let’s put all of that in context, here.
North Korea is speeding up its work on gaining the ability to launch a nuclear attack against the United States. President Donald Trump and our military are fully aware of that, and will take action to protect the United States as necessary.
There have to be some elements of the North Korean military who are aware of that.
Could it be that this uncontested defection is an indication of something bigger — something representative of the mindset of a portion of the North Korean military? It might be sloppiness. It might be something deeper.
Time will tell.
How Will California Reimburse Its Rich Citizens For The SALT Deduction?
California's politicians have just cost their people over $100 million in lost tax deductions. Suddenly, the state's 13.2% top rate is no longer amusing.
How will the state make it up to them?
If it can't the state will see an exodus of biblical proportions. With no Red Sea to intervene.
How will the state make it up to them?
If it can't the state will see an exodus of biblical proportions. With no Red Sea to intervene.
The damage will be massive. Six million California households deduct an average of $65 on their federal forms. How will the Democrats induce them to stay in the Bay State after they lose about $37,000 a year in SALT (state and local tax) deductions? -- only partly offset by a doubling of the standard deductions.
And with the four communities with the highest average home values in California, these richer homes will suffer from caps in mortgage interest deductions.
Will they stay or leave?
If they leave, it will set off a seismic shift that will change the country in fundamental ways.
The New Okies, dissidents of many who fled the Dust Bowl in the 30s, will show up in tax havens like Texas and Florida as new, driven, wealthy voters in their new states determined to stop the leftward drift from ruining their new homes too.
If they leave, what will that do to California? Will it be a new Detroit or Illinois drifting ever leftward and downward? Imploding at warp speed.
Or will California cut its income taxes and its spending? It obviously has to, but can its nearsighted liberals realize the need to do so?
One gets the feeling that we are watching the presidentially assisted suicide of a liberal state.
And with the four communities with the highest average home values in California, these richer homes will suffer from caps in mortgage interest deductions.
Will they stay or leave?
If they leave, it will set off a seismic shift that will change the country in fundamental ways.
The New Okies, dissidents of many who fled the Dust Bowl in the 30s, will show up in tax havens like Texas and Florida as new, driven, wealthy voters in their new states determined to stop the leftward drift from ruining their new homes too.
If they leave, what will that do to California? Will it be a new Detroit or Illinois drifting ever leftward and downward? Imploding at warp speed.
Or will California cut its income taxes and its spending? It obviously has to, but can its nearsighted liberals realize the need to do so?
One gets the feeling that we are watching the presidentially assisted suicide of a liberal state.
‘If DREAM Act Were So Popular, Dems Would’ve Shut Down Gov’t:’ Tom Cotton Fires Back at Amnesty Advocates
by JOHN BINDER
AP/Jacquelyn Martin
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) says that if a mass amnesty plan were as popular as the mainstream media purports it to be, Democrats would have used a year-end spending bill to shut down the government unless they got amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.
In a response to a New York Times report on President Trump’s pro-American immigration agenda, Cotton fired back at the notion from the mainstream media and open borders advocates that the DREAM Act, the most expansive amnesty plan filed in Congress, is popular.
Cotton also credited President Trump’s opposition to the process known as “chain migration,” where newly naturalized immigrants can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. with them, and the Diversity Visa Lottery program, as being “part of his victory” in the 2016 presidential election.
The Diversity Visa Lottery gives out 50,000 visas every year to foreign nationals from a multitude of countries, including those with known terrorist problems – such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.
9. @realDonaldTrump is right when he calls things like the diversity lottery & chain migration "a joke." That's the exact kind of bipartisan, conventional orthodoxy that he defied in 2016, which contributed in no small part to his victory.
Tom Cotton ✔@TomCottonAR10. And if mass amnesty without real reform, eg, the DREAM Act, were so popular, Dems would've shut down government over it. But it's not, they know it, & that's why they folded & passed a funding bill without amnesty. THE END.
In multiple statements ahead of the end of the year, Democrats and Republican establishment figures claimed they would shut down the federal government if a year-end spending bill did not include amnesty for illegal aliens shielded from deportation under the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
But, roughly two weeks before the spending bill was passed by the House and Senate, and subsequently signed off on by President Trump, Democrats began reversing course on DACA, no longer stating that they would shut down the government over the issue.
Cotton’s assertion that a DREAM Act amnesty that would begin with nearly 800,000 to 3.5 million illegal aliens getting permanent legal status is unpopular with Americans is backed up by multiple Breitbart News reports.
For example, as Breitbart News reported, support for shutting down the government to give DACA illegal aliens amnesty collapsed at the beginning of December, with less than 35 percent of Democratic voters supporting the initiative.
Poll: Support to Shut Down Gov’t Over DACA Amnesty Collapses to Less than 35 Percent Among Democrats http://ift.tt/2ADM9rj …
Support for shutting down the federal government unless nearly 800,000 illegal aliens are given amnesty has collapsedbreitbart.com
A week later, Breitbart News reported, another poll revealed that only 20 percent of swing voters across the country believed giving amnesty to DACA illegal aliens was an “extremely important priority.”
Even among Democrats, the poll reaffirmed that DACA amnesty was not a priority for left-wing voters, with an amnesty sharing an eighth-place ranking in a priority list of 15 named issues, just ahead of “renegotiating NAFTA, a trade agreement between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, to provide more protection for US-based jobs,” but far behind “Taking action to lower prescription drug prices.”
Furthermore, a poll released a week before the House and Senate passed their spending bill with no amnesty for DACA illegal aliens, showed that only about 18 percent of swing voters said DACA amnesty was an “extremely important priority.”
While DACA amnesty continues to poll poorly with Americans, Trump’s pro-American immigration agenda remains popular, though that has not been enough for House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to take up immigration reform initiatives that would lower overall immigration levels to benefit American workers.
In the most recent polling on mandatory E-Verify, conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, Americans overwhelmingly support the immigration initiative with 68 percent of voters supporting the plan. E-Verify is the system that prevents businesses from hiring illegal aliens over Americans.
Another 71 percent of voters said businesses should be required to hire from pools of Americans with the highest unemployment rates before importing cheaper, foreign workers through various visa programs or hiring illegal aliens.
The poll also revealed the vast support that economic nationalism has among the American public. Even if Americans had to pay more for products and goods, the Pulse Opinion Research poll showed nearly 60 percent of voters said it would be better for businesses to pay more to attract American workers even if prices did rise.
Trump: Dossier a 'Crooked Hillary Pile of Garbage'
By Sandy Fitzgerald
(AP)
President Donald Trump Tuesday slammed a dossier compiled during the election about him as a "Crooked Hillary pile of garbage," that was used as the basis of going after his campaign.
In a tweet tagged to Fox News' "Fox & Friends," Trump tweeted:
WOW, @foxandfrlends “Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.” And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!
The president did not mention in the comment which segment or guest on the show elicited the response, but the comments came following an interview involving former Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, now a network correspondent, and his comments concerning FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who is reportedly planning to retire this spring.
On the program, the former House Ways and Means committee chairman commented that it has been "long known" that the dossier is "bogus."
"The question is, how was it funded?" Chaffetz said. "That question was not answered yet. Second question is did they use it to go to a court and get that court then to allow them to spy on Americans? If that happens, have you gone, well, way, way beyond anything of reason and somebody should be prosecuted for that."
And if the dossier is "bogus" and there are questions about how it was funded, that raises questions on using what it contained as evidence needed for the FBI to obtain a Foreign intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant needed to eavesdrop on the president's team.
"Remember, before the Senate — before the House Judiciary Committee, Congressmen Jim Jordan, Ron DeSantis, other people were asking, how was this funded?" said Chaffetz. "You had people at the senior most level at the Department of Justice saying well, we know but we're not going to tell you."
And that, continued Chaffetz, was a "flashing red light that it was funded through more nefarious ties, perhaps with the [Hillary] Clinton campaign."
It was revealed back in October that Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the research that became the infamous dossier on Trump after the original Republican donor stopped funding it.
Bolton: UN Budget Cuts 'Real Opportunity' for Trump Admin
By Sandy Fitzgerald
(Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)Former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton Tuesday applauded cuts to the United Nations budget, saying they are a "real opportunity" for President Donald Trump's administration to rethink the United States' share of what it contributes to the world agency and possibly even pulling out of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
"There are plenty of parts of the U.N. system that don't deserve any U.S. funding, let alone a cut," Bolton told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program. "I think if the administration really wants to review what the options are available to us, they should think about having the U.S. in the international taxation [plan] that burdens us with a 22 percent share of most U.N. budgets, and move toward voluntary contributions."
If other countries follow, he added, "it would be like a tsunami through the U.N. system," Bolton said.
Meanwhile, Bolton said he also believes the United States should withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council, and "totally defund it."
"I think it's pure theater," said Bolton. "There are a number of other U.N. programs and agencies I think we could zero out and we stay in the ones that we think are actually providing value. It is a revolutionary principle."
On Sunday, current U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced a $285 million cut that had been made in the U.N.'s core budget, after the General Assembly adopted a $5.396 billion budget for 2018-2019, just below the $5.4 billion that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had sought.
The United States provides for 22 percent of the U.N.'s core budget, and Haley commented in a statement that "inefficiency and overspending" were "well-known" at the world agency.
Meanwhile, several allies voted against the United States' decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but pulling money from them is a separate subject, said Bolton.
However, he thinks the focus on the U.N. is proper, and many American were shocked to see U.S. allies standing with adversaries to criticize the United States for moving the embassy.
"This is one of these catastrophic mistakes that the U.N. makes from time to time, but it is why it gives the Trump administration a real opportunity to say no more business as usual," said Bolton.
He also said it was not coincidental for the U.N. to target the United States.
"It is something that I think the majority in the general assembly got used to during the Obama administration," said Bolton. "Maybe they didn't realize there was a new president. I think that will come. It is now really up to the administration to come up with what its plan will be. But I think it would find great reception in Congress and may have impact in an election year as well."
The $285 million cut was likely based on agreement with other countries, and not "so revolutionary," said Bolton.
"The stage is now set for some pretty dramatic steps and I think the administration would be well advised to do that."
G’ day…Ciao…
Helen and Moe Lauzier
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