The One where the Washington State Trooper is suspended(?) for following federal law

THIS STORY got me thinking.

I’ve been thinking about this whole process.

If federal law REQUIRES that information about illegals arrested for felonies have their information and location transmitted to ICE and states INSTRUCT their employees to refuse to comply with the law ….

1. Hasn’t SCOTUS already ruled that federal law supersedes LEGISLATED state law (let alone a policy from some boss)?
   
2. Aren’t those instructing their employees to violate federal law engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct justice? (of SOME KIND?)
   
3. Wouldn’t the entire force of the federal govt entering a state building to arrest on federal charges some Mayor, Police Chief, Governor be a REAL OPTIMAL WAY TO TEST ENDING SANCTUARY CITIES/STATES?
   
4. Wouldn’t illegal immigrants seeing this PROCESS unfold, draw the proper conclusions?
   
5. Wouldn’t it make it an ideal moment to elucidate BOTH the policy for Dreamers and that our objections are to ILLEGAL immigration, not immigration, which we all still feel the same about … just like 1905?

Just askin’

Chris Wallace Shows His Tail

When someone made a complete fool of himself in a dismaying manner, my grandmother, a feisty woman who hailed from the hills of East Tennessee, declared: "He really showed his tail."

On Fox News Sunday on February 19, 2017, Chris Wallace was in a state of high dudgeon:


Hey, Chris! Such a state of high dudgeon is warranted only when the Trump administration takes action against these fake-news "journalists."

Trump's words declaring that certain of the media are an enemy of the people are not action.

And, Chris, "methinks that thou dost protest too much."

Why the Tweets are Necessary and Will Continue

There is a huge difference between an adversarial press and overt hostility.

In one, objective gaps between SUBSTANTIAL observations about MEANINGFUL subjects are probed relentlessly.

In the latter, every issue must be framed negatively, and pursued compulsively regardless of consequence.

While I felt the press despised Trump (was it WaPo who called Trump vile in a counter-endorsement of Hillary?) I did not feel they were a HOSTILE FORCE, although VILE is not a description an adversarial press uses, IS IT?

And then Amanpour (net worth $12m and married to a Clinton Admin upper State Dept employee) vented hyperbolically about how sad her profession’s future was, heading for the ‘camps‘ (probably, however, Camp Eagle Hill, for a nice summer)

And then Reuters announced they were going to adopt the same standards for covering Trump that they use in places like Turkey and North Korea.

And then came on nearly the same day the ‘Bowling Green Massacre’ by KellyAnne Conway and the dual dementia twins of Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi claiming respectively that Putin was a bad man because he had invaded Korea and then Pelosi firmly showed her sad disgust, telling us all, so sorry, but there was just no way she could work with PRESIDENT BUSH.

On Fox, BOTH stories were covered. On CNN? MSNBC? ABC? NBC? CBS? I never saw a second of the latter story. Shown once? 10 seconds vs how many KellyAnne bites?

Of course there was no Bowling Green Massacre, what there was, was the arrest of two massacre wanna be perps who had ALREADY KILLED AMERICANS in Iraq and had snuck into the USA via our ‘secure vetting’.

Finally, yesterday, after the Meet The Press’s, Chuck Todd master tweet that the President of the USA was UN AMERICAN, and Trump, per usual, responded with a harder slam ..we had John McCain featured all day on CNN, and the lead story on the pages of all the news webs sites, of CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS, and MSNBC.

Not getting the same level of play? Rand Paul

I think Senator McCain’s perspective is colored by his disagreements with President Trump on foreign policy. If I were to look at foreign policy, I would say John McCain has been wrong on just about everything over the last four decades.

Which, of course, reminds us all of McCain’s fabulous judgment posing with the ‘moderate’ Free Syrian Army some of whom turned out to be ISIS, and Al Nusra, kidnappers and allies of same. His denial ~’we would never KNOWINGLY do that’.

Backup HERE,  HERE and HERE.

So why wasn’t this judgment fiasco played along with McCain’s statement about Trump’s nascent, seminal dictatorship behavior? Because every issue must be framed negatively, and pursued compulsively regardless of consequence.

To what end?

{SARC ON}

And by the way, if the press is a HOSTILE ENTITY to the president, what are they to his voters? How would they recommend those who put such a man in office be dealt with?

Venn diagram on that? But I don’t want to sound like Fareed Zakaria, or Don Lemon, or Brian Stelter or feel fear in my bed that a Chuck Todd might want to deal with me as unAmerican via some ‘proper’ means.

{SARC OFF}

The way the stories are chosen (the most important component), framed and then repeated ad nauseum in ‘panels’ characterize that every issue must be framed negatively, and pursued compulsively regardless of consequence.

Trump’s tweets REFOCUS the discussion.

Trump’s tweets REFOCUS the objective.

Trump’s tweets destroy the objective of FREEZING THE TARGET

Trump’s tweets push a negative so hard it becomes a positive

Trump’s tweets make the opposition feel vulnerable even though there is no bite (IT’S THE USA)

Trump’s tweets are a tactic that a LOT of people enjoy

Trump’s tweets force the press to live up to their own rules

Trump’s tweets exist outside the entire expert experience and book of how the press deals with the president

Trump’s tweets make the press feel as if he has some weird power, and they don;t understand how that works

DOES ANY OF THIS LIST SOUND FAMILIAR?

IT SHOULD

City of Angels

Jaco Pastorius, bass;
Othello Molineaux, Leroy Williams, steel pans;
Toots Thielemans, harmonica;
Mike Gerber, piano;
Kenwood Dennard, drums;
Ted Leand, guitar;
Don Alias, Oscar Salas, percussion

Recorded in 1982. Never on any album that I know of.

Vashkar

Paul Bley - Keyboards
Jaco Pastorius - Bass
Pat Metheney - Guitar
Bruce Ditmas - Drums

Early Jaco, way down in the mix.

Trump Aid Sebastian Gorka On the BBC, Accuses Media of Peddling In Fake News

Damn, Sebastian Gorka is great at this.

Bill Kristol Is An Idiot

This is My Badass, Revolutionary Face

From The Z Man:

The other day, Bill Kristol took to twitter to announce his support for a coup against President Trump. Kristol has become fond of this sort of thing, leading some to wonder if he has lost his marbles. Alternatively, it could just be a lonely old man looking for attention as no one seems to care about his opinions these days. It’s hard to know, but Kristol is still taken seriously by people in Washington, especially with the neocon cabal that still occupies a lot of space in the media and the GOP. 

Here’s the tweet: 

Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 14, 2017

Regardless of his intentions, Kristol is a good example to keep in mind when wondering how to judge the opinions from the commentariat. Bill Kristol has been wrong about most everything for the last 25 years. He was a champion of Bush’s big government conservatism, which meant doing all the things the Left dreamed of doing, but calling it principled conservatism. He also championed the invade the world/invite the world polices that resulted in losing at least two wars of choice and flooding the nation with low-IQ hostiles from the third world. 

That’s a lot of wrong for one little man. 

There are two questions that arise when looking at the disastrous career of a guy like Kristol. One is how was he allowed to wreak so much havoc? People like Pat Buchanan warned about the lunacy of neo-conservatism from the onset, but Kristol and his cohorts in the movement not only outmaneuvered the paleocons, they had them banished to the void. That raises the other question. How is it that people so wrong could be so good at maneuvering their way to positions of authority? 

An answer to former question can and will fill up many books. The latter question is far simpler. The policy experts and political wizards of our age are men who possess no standing outside the very narrow field of politics. In the higher reaches, none of them have made a mark in a field outside of politics, like science or business. They prefer to restate, in slightly different terms, the views of a hundred predecessors, so they can invest all of their energies into currying favor with the powerful. 

It is often argued that the appeal of politics is that it allows people to gain power and wealth, without having to invent a better mousetrap or figure out a better way to build a mousetrap. The reality is that the main attraction for guys like Kristol is they see punditry and commentary as fields where there is no right answer. Science, math, business, these are fields with right answers and more important, wrong answers. In the productive world, wrong answers have consequences. 

Third rate men will always be drawn to endeavors where everyone can claim to be right, by simply saying that everyone else is wrong. That’s how a Bill Kristol can trade on the family name and his father’s accomplishments to lever himself into positions of authority within the Republican Party. He is good at the small strategies of parlor room politics, but entirely worthless at everything else. It is no wonder that he fell for every crackpot policy idea of the last 25 years. He had no basis from which to judge them.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING. 

George Harrison

All Things Must Pass

1.What Is Life
2.My Sweet Lord
3. I'd Have You Anytime
4. Wah Wah
5. Isn't It a Pity(Version One)
6.If Not For You
7. Behind That Locked Door
8. Let It Down
9. Run of The Mill
10..Beware of Darkness
11. Apple Scruffs
12.Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)
13. Awaiting On You All
14. All Things Must Pass
15. I Dig Love
16. Art Of Dying
17. Isn't It A Pity (Version Two)
18. Hear Me Lord

Highway Star

Chickenfoot is

Sammy Hagar - Vocals
Joe Satriani - Guitar
Michael Anthony - Bass and Vocals
Chad Smith - Drums

NYT: How Can We Get Rid Of Trump?

From the New York Times:

Maybe things will settle down. But what is striking about Trump is not just the dysfunction of his administration but also the — vigorously denied — allegations that Trump’s team may have cooperated with Vladimir Putin to steal the election. 

What’s also different is the broad concern that Trump is both: 

A) unfit for office, and 

B) dangerously unstable. 

One pro-American leader in a foreign country called me up the other day and skipped the preliminaries, starting with: “What the [expletive] is wrong with your country?” 

So let’s investigate: 

Is there any way out? 

Trump still has significant political support, so the obstacles are gargantuan. But the cleanest and quickest way to remove a president involves Section 4 of the 25th Amendment and has never been attempted. It provides that the cabinet can, by a simple majority vote, strip the president of his powers and immediately hand power to the vice president. 

The catch is that the ousted president can object, and in that case Congress must approve the ouster by a two-thirds vote in each chamber, or the president regains office.

Is the media the Enemy?

Mystery: What was Comey’s secret briefing yesterday to the Senate Intelligence Committee about?

Reporters who cover the Senate regularly and were there after the briefing ended found it unusual and potentially significant for a number of reasons. For one thing, the briefing was long — close to three hours by one account. It was also secretive even by traditional standards: Although Comey was photographed leaving the meeting, committee members wouldn’t admit that he’d been there. And it seemed as though the briefing was urgent, with senators delaying their departure during a weekend recess to hear what Comey had to say.

From Roll Call:

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, along with ex-officio member and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, huddled for a total of more than two hours on Friday with Comey. 

The FBI director’s visit was not announced publicly, and it’s possible members of the Capitol Hill press corps only found out because he was spotted in the hallways and entered a secure room used for intelligence briefings. 

But leaving that secure room in the Capitol Visitor Center, senators declined to even confirm the presence of the FBI director, much less the substance of the meeting. 

Those who did talk generally only gave “no comments” or referred questions to Intelligence Chairman Richard M. Burr and ranking member Mark Warner.

Not even staff were told about the briefing. 

After the briefing, Rubio Tweeted thusly:

I am now very confident Senate Intel Comm I serve on will conduct thorough bipartisan investigation of #Putin interference and influence

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 17, 2017

Here’s Reuters with a new story this afternoon claiming that Comey’s FBI is running no fewer than three separate investigations into Russian hacking during the campaign. 

“This counterintelligence inquiry includes but is not limited to examination of financial transactions by Russian individuals and companies who are believed to have links to Trump associates. The transactions under scrutiny involve investments by Russians in overseas entities that appear to have been undertaken through middlemen and front companies, two people briefed on the probe said.”

Washington State Trooper Under Review For Notifying ICE Of An Illegal Alien

From the Washington Examiner:

A politician in Washington state wants to know why cooperating with federal immigration authorities landed a state trooper in hot water. 

Steve O’Ban, R, a state senator from Tacoma, Wa., sent a letter to Gov. Jay Inslee, D, Friday expressing “serious concerns” over an administrative review the Washington State Patrol may be undertaking at the governor’s request. 

An unnamed state trooper is being grilled for telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement about one of their suspects last week, wanted on a felony warrant and found after a traffic accident on I-5. 

That man is Armando Chavez Corona, who ICE says was convicted on a felony drug charge and departed to Mexico four times from 1996 to 2000. 

The trooper did not detain Chavez Corona, who was not at fault in the accident, but ICE picked him up at the scene of the collision after the trooper contacted the agency. He currently awaits deportation. 

“The State Patrol is reviewing whether the trooper followed an internal policy that limits how much troopers can do to help federal immigration officials,” reported the Tacoma News Tribune Friday.

BIG CHANGES COMING: Trump Administration Looking to Expand DOJ Immigration Court, Deport More Illegals, Cut Budgets, Eliminate Whole Government Bureaucracies?

From the Washington Post:

Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly has signed sweeping new guidelines that empower federal authorities to more aggressively detain and deport illegal immigrants inside the United States and at the border. 

In a pair of memos, Kelly offered more detail on plans for the agency to hire thousands of additional enforcement agents, expand the pool of immigrants who are prioritized for removal, speed up deportation hearings and enlist local law enforcement to help make arrests. 

The new directives would supersede nearly all of those issued under previous administrations, Kelly said, including measures from President Barack Obama aimed at focusing deportations exclusively on hardened criminals and those with terrorist ties. 

A White House official said the memos were drafts and that they are under review by the White House Counsel’s Office, which is seeking some changes.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

From an Anonymous commenter:

A friend of mine who is a property leasing in Houston tells me this; downtown high rise building has the DOJ Immigration Court as one of their primary tenants…..they are now expanding their space in anticipation of more deportation proceedings……looking to at least double in size, ramping up for the new Trump directives……

AND THEN THERE'S THIS:

PBS, NEA, AmeriCorps on the chopping block in Trump’s first budget

Work on the first Trump administration budget has been delayed as the budget office awaited Senate confirmation of former Representative Mick Mulvaney, a spending hard-liner, as budget director. 

Now that he is in place, his office is ready to move ahead with a list of nine programs to eliminate, an opening salvo in the Trump administration’s effort to reorder the government and increase spending on defense and infrastructure… 

Other agencies on the budget office’s list of cuts include the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Corporation for National and Community Service, which finances programs run by AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps. The memo also proposed reducing funding for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, a nonprofit organization focused on urban development.

AND THIS:

Trump’s former head of the EPA transition, Myron Ebell, told media outlets that the administration is looking to cut the agency’s staff by two-thirds, dropping from 15,000 to 5,000 employees.

Obama-linked activists have a ‘training manual’ for protesting Trump

From the New York Post:

Organizing for Action, a group founded by Obama and featured prominently on his new post-presidency website, is distributing a training manual to anti-Trump activists that advises them to bully GOP lawmakers into backing off support for repealing ObamaCare, curbing immigration from high-risk Islamic nations, and building a border wall. 

In a new Facebook post, OFA calls on activists to mobilize against Republicans from now until Feb. 26, when “representatives are going to be in their home districts.” 

The protesters disrupted town halls earlier this month, including one held in Utah by House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who was confronted by hundreds of angry demonstrators claiming to be his constituents. 

The manual, published with OFA partner “Indivisible,” advises protesters to go into halls quietly so as not to raise alarms, and “grab seats at the front of the room but do not all sit together.” 

Rather, spread out in pairs to make it seem like the whole room opposes the Republican host’s positions. 

“This will help reinforce the impression of broad consensus.” It also urges them to ask “hostile” questions — while keeping “a firm hold on the mic” — and loudly boo the the GOP politician if he isn’t “giving you real answers.” 

“Express your concern [to the event’s hosts] they are giving a platform to pro-Trump authoritarianism, racism, and corruption,” it says. 

The goal is to make Republicans, even from safe districts, second-guess their support for the Trump agenda, and to prime “the ground for the 2018 midterms when Democrats retake power.” 

The goal is to make Republicans, even from safe districts, second-guess their support for the Trump agenda

Trump And The Media

Received via email:

Lunch with the Pope

President-elect Trump invited the Pope for lunch on his mega yacht.
The Pope accepted and during lunch, a puff of wind blew the Pontiff's hat off, right into the water.

It floated off about 50 feet, then the wind died down and it just floated in place.

The crew and the secret service were scrambling to launch a boat to go get it, when Trump waved them off, saying, "Never mind, boys, I'll get it."

The Donald climbed over the side of the yacht, walked on the water to the hat, picked it up, walked back on the water, climbed into the yacht, and handed the Pope his hat.

The crew was speechless. The security team and the Pope's entourage were speechless.

No one knew what to say, not even the Pope.

But that afternoon, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN reported:

"TRUMP CAN'T SWIM!"