Archive for the 'Politics' Category

The Mercury News.

SAN JOSE — A corruption investigation targeting the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office over a possible pay-to-play racket for concealed-handgun privileges now has reached the top tier of Sheriff Laurie Smith’s administration, with sources saying her second-in-command — Undersheriff Rick Sung — now is a subject of the wide-ranging probe into whether Smith rewarded political donors with the coveted permits.

[ … ]

As the investigation intensifies, tension has been building inside the Sheriff’s Office. To date, at least four sheriff’s supervisors — including at least one other high-ranking commander — have been the subject of search warrants in connection with suspected “quid pro quo” handling of the permits, according to sources familiar with the case. The DA’s office previously served a warrant at Sheriff’s Office headquarters in early August.

You mean to tell me that “may issue” states are subject to corruption where the issuing authority rewards loyalty with perks?

Say it ain’t so.  I just cannot believe it.

AP:

The win will give Democrats control of the legislature and governorship for the first time in 26 years. Democrats have pledged to pass new gun restrictions and raise the minimum wage once in power.

It’s going to happen most places in America.  This is just the first wave.  It’s a shame, really.

I know good people in Virginia, in the mountainous areas, around Damascus, where they can barely contain their animosity for the progressive policies in Northern Virginia.

But here we are.  The “Army of Northern Virginia” is now a bunch of nanny state controllers who want to implement communism.

I’m sorry to my readers in Virginia.

Would you like to comment on this, James?  We’re waiting.

LA Times.

Ten special agents from the California Department of Justice were watching as a man walked out of the Big Reno Show and placed his purchases in his car.

The black Isuzu with California plates headed west on Interstate 80 into the Sierra Nevada, eventually crossing the Nevada state line. That’s when the California Highway Patrol pulled Vincent Huey over. Inside the vehicle, state Justice Department agents found 18 high-capacity magazines, some capable of holding 30 rounds, according to court records.

Ten agents.  Not shutting down Latino gangs, not stopping the Marijuana farmers from raping the land and polluting the water with illicit use of chemicals.  Ten agents, working on high capacity magazines.

JWR says this.

California has the largest tax base of any state in the nation–with quite high income taxes, sales taxes, and fuel taxes. But despite these criminally high tax rates, California is now famous for its crumbling freeways, decrepit bridges (despite $3 to $7 bridge tolls), 20+ cents per kilowatt hour power bills, high tap water bills, and taxes that have boosted gasoline prices to $4+ per gallon. There are restrictions on wood home heating stoves, hundreds of gun control laws, and bi-annual smog inspections for cars. Many older cars can be re-registered only after paying hundreds of dollars in “attempted” smog control remediation. And then there are the leaky water mains, the leaky natural gas pipes, and leaky dams.

The state is becoming over-run with illegal aliens. The state legislature granted them driver’s licenses. And now there is talk of illegals being appointed to state boards and commissions–all for the sake of “fair representation.” In California’s larger cities, the streets are strewn with human feces and hypodermic syringes. Rats now breed in piles of uncollected trash. Homeless mental patients wander through neighborhoods shouting obscenities, there is public nudity, burgeoning homeless encampments, legalized recreational marijuana… The list goes on and on. Despite all of these problems, the legislature seems intent on providing free health care to illegal aliens, and taxpayer funding of huge Green Energy boondoggles. Not just millions but billions of California taxpayer dollars have been wasted. Talk radio show host Michael Savage refers to San Francisco as “Sodom By The Sea.” Unfortunately, his jab is not just hyperbole.

All in all, California is now just a dim reflection of the paradise that it once was, in its golden years as The Golden State. Even the once ultra-conservative Orange County has a majority of Democrats. I’m sad to say it, but California is now a lost cause. I mourn for the loss of the California of my youth.

My advice is to get out while you can, just don’t bring progressive politics with you.  Leave that and your high taxation behind for the communists to sort out.

Via reader Joe, this terrible report.

Last Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr issued a memorandum to all U.S. attorneys, law enforcement agencies and top ranking Justice Department officials announcing the imminent implementation of a new “national disruption and early engagement program” aimed at detecting potential mass shooters before they commit any crime.

Per the memorandum, Barr has “directed the Department [of Justice] and the FBI to lead an effort to refine our ability to identify, assess and engage potential mass shooters before they strike.” The Attorney General further described the coming initiative, slated to be implemented early next year, as “an efficient, effective and programmatic strategy to disrupt individuals who are mobilizing towards violence, by all lawful means.” More specific information about the program is set to follow the recent memorandum, according to Barr, though it is unclear if that forthcoming document will be made public.

Barr also requested that those who received the memorandum send their “best and brightest” to a training conference at FBI headquarters this coming December where the DOJ, FBI and “private sector partners” will prepare for the full implementation of the new policy and will also be able to provide “new ideas” for inclusion in the program.

Perhaps the most jarring aspect of the memorandum is Barr’s frank admission that many of the “early engagement” tactics that the new program would utilize were “born of the posture we adopted with respect to terrorist threats.” In other words, the foundation for many of the policies utilized following the post-9/11 “war on terror” are also the foundation for the “early engagement” tactics that Barr seeks to use to identify potential criminals as part of this new policy. Though those “war on terror” policies have largely targeted individuals abroad, Barr’s memorandum makes it clear that some of those same controversial tactics will soon be used domestically.

Barr’s memorandum also alludes to current practices by the FBI and DOJ that will shape the new plan. Though more specifics of the new policy will be provided in the forthcoming notice, Barr notes that “newly developed tactics” used by the Joint Terrorist Task Forces “include the use of clinical psychologists, threat assessment professionals, intervention teams and community groups” to detect risk and suggests that the new “early engagement program” will work along similar lines. Barr also alludes to this “community” approach in a separate instance, when he writes that “when the public ‘says something’ to alert us to a potential threat, we must do something.”

As I’ve said before, “Ouija boards, palm readers, witches, warlocks, carnival fortune tellers, tribal witchdoctors, and “small changes that might foretell violence.”

It’s all the same thing to me, and if you have any sense at all, you too.  The Bible clearly says that those guilty of divination will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, and that the Lord hates such people (Galatians 5:19-21, Leviticus 19:24-32, Deuteronomy 18:9-15, Jeremiah 27: 9-19, Exodus 22: 18-19, 1 Samuel 15:23, Isaiah 2:5-8).”

God will not bless these designs.  No, I’m not saying they won’t catch a person here or there they think might have done something had it not been for the cops on their doorstep.  If you’re vision is that short-sighted, you need spectacles.

I’m saying something much deeper and more extensive.  When a country sacrifices it’s unborn, arms the state, tries to disarm it’s people and render them incapable of defense, and allows forcible conversion of children to Islam in its schools, God has turned His back on that people.  That brings a whole host of awful things down.  God is sovereign, the only lawgiver.  He will not be mocked.

We are at the end of an era.  America is “storing up wrath” for itself (Romans 1:5), and that means the righteous will suffer earthly pains in the wake of God’s judgment on the wicked.  Those who have a salvific relationship with Christ will face the doom of earthly judgment (even if not heavenly judgment) along with everyone else.

We’re all headed for hard times, folks.

And just to make sure you’ve got this, William Barr is Donald Trump’s AG.  Trump managed to implement red flag laws without red flag laws.  He said he would do it, and the plans are in place.  This is your president.  He owns this.  You don’t think Barr is acting on his own, do you?

Your political elites are experts at that.

Do we still need the PATRIOT Act? Did we ever? All laws are certainly a product of their times. But this seems much more acutely true of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed in a rush and under duress without due consideration.

Particularly in light of the revelations from Edward Snowden – that the government is spying on everything they possibly can – it’s worth asking if there’s any walking back. He points out that the police state apparatus was originally for drug dealers, then for terrorists, but ultimately ended up being applied to anyone and everyone.

What’s more, Bob Bullard notes another frightful aspect of the USA PATRIOT Act: Terrorism-related cases are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This means that there is little or no oversight. There is no surer hallmark of a police state than an all-powerful domestic surveillance agency with no transparency or oversight. While the USA PATRIOT Act might not create an American Stasi as such, it certainly paves the way for one.

It depends on the meaning of the word “need.”  You don’t need it.  I don’t need it.  The writer doesn’t need it.  But the political elites need it if they’re going to feed their insatiable hunger for omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence.

It’s not about terror or terrorists, and it never was.  And recall who championed all of this.  George W. Bush, a republican.

Via David Codrea, this awful decision by the supreme court.

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to review the case of Caleigh Wood, a Christian eleventh-grade public high school student in Maryland who, despite threats of receiving a failing grade, refused to deny her faith by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the Shahada—“Thereis no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

[ … ]

The legal question at stake was whether La Plata High School violated the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Speech Clauses when it gave Caleigh Wood an assignment she was unable to complete without violating her religious conscience as a Christian.

She believes it is a sin to profess the existence of any other god but the Christian God. She stood firm in her Christian beliefs and was punished for it. School officials refused her father’s request that she be allowed to opt-out or be given an alternative assignment.  She refused to complete her anti-Christian assignment and consequently received a failing grade.

Thompson added: “Many public schools have become hot beds of Islamic propaganda. Teaching Islam in schools has gone far beyond a basic history lesson. Prompted by zealous Islamic activism and emboldened by confusing court decisions, schools are now bending over backwards to promote Islam while at the same time denigrating Christianity.”

“Although the Supreme Court passed up an opportunity to provide clearer constitutional guidance on this important issue, there will be other chances as this issue isn’t going away anytime soon,” he said.

Don’t count on it.  They had the chance this time and declined.  My guess is that it would be Roberts who caused the problem, but one never knows.

If you send your child to a public school, you’re sending them to a communist indoctrination camp.  Or Islamist study center.  Or a place where they will be told that it’s okay not to know whether you’re a boy or a girl.

Is any of that okay with you?

Examiner.

The majority of Americans believe that we are two-thirds of the way to being on the edge of civil war. That to me is a very pessimistic place,” said Mo Elleithee, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.

And worse, he said in announcing the results of the Institute’s Battleground Poll civility survey, the political division is likely to make the upcoming 2020 presidential race the nastiest in modern history.

The politics is just a prelude.  7 in 10 believe this because it’s true.  That’s not me saying the U.S. is on the verge of civil war, that’s a poll.  I’m just passing it on.

Everything the ruling elite could possibly do to bring this about is being done.

You can be sure of one thing, though.  There will be nothing “civil” about war in America.

Judicial Watch.

Judicial Watch today released new Clinton emails on the Benghazi controversy that had been covered up for years and would have exposed Hillary Clinton’s email account if they had been released when the State Department first uncovered them in 2014. The long withheld email, clearly responsive to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack,” contains Clinton’s private email address and a conversation about the YouTube video that sparked the Benghazi talking points scandal (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). This Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.

The Clinton email cover-up led to court-ordered discovery into three specific areas: whether Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email.  (The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”)

Personal coverup at the expense of dead people in Benghazi, while support was denied to the living when it was available.  What pigs.  What swine.

Via WRSA, from Matt Bracken.

I have no doubt he was promised something for this bit is silliness.  No one actually believes those things about Hillary Clinton.  With the corruption, Uranium One, the misadventures in Haiti, and the trail of dead bodies lining the streets from Arkansas to Washington, D.C., everyone knows all about the Clintons.  This isn’t hard.  It’s also not difficult to believe that no one in the audience believed a word of his speech.  The more difficult thing is to understand why anyone would care what McRaven thinks?

Let me switch gears for a moment to General Mattis.  He comes with indisputable creds form the USMC, but even then, his view of things is broken.  He upbraided Trump several days ago with these words.

“I earned my spurs on the battlefield … Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor,” Mattis joked at one point, in a reference to the medical deferment for bone spurs that kept Mr. Trump from serving in the military during the Vietnam War.

At another point, Mattis responded to reports that Mr. Trump called him “the world’s most overrated general” during a meeting with Democrats earlier this week. Mattis joked that he felt like he had “achieved greatness,” because he was “not just an overrated general, I am the greatest, the world’s most overrated.”

“I’m honored to be considered that by Donald Trump, because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress,” he continued. “So, I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals. Frankly that sounds pretty good to me.”

I have no problem with his upbraiding of the president.  I don’t like him.  I didn’t like the one before him, nor the one before him, nor the one before him.  What I do have a problem with is discussed here.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, military brass quickly began to plan an attack on al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But Marines almost missed being a part of this effort, as planners including Army Gen. Tommy Franks, then CENTCOM commander, didn’t see the point in sending an amphibious force into a landlocked country. But Mattis was part of a small team of officials who crafted a plan to send Task Force 58 — amphibious ships and a landing force — into Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan. “The minute [5th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. William Moore] pointed to a map showing landlocked Afghanistan, hundreds of miles from the sea, I knew I could land there with thousands of Marines,” Mattis writes.

Mattis indicates another clash with Franks, the CENTCOM commander, elsewhere in the book, when he describes the 2001 search for Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Mattis believed, with the use of light infantry and special operations troops, he could close off the escape routes and take bin Laden. Franks thought sending Marines and vehicles into the mountains would only repeat Soviet mistakes. Ultimately, the trap was not laid, and bin Laden would not be killed until 2011. “If I had to do it again,” Mattis wrote, “I would have called both [the U.S. Army Central Command] commander and Admiral Moore and said, ‘Sir, I have a plan to accomplish the mission, kill Osama bin Laden, and hand you a victory. All I need is your permission.'”

And he was right.  Readers from long ago may recall that my counsel would have been to put Marines on the border with Pakistan in the Hindu Kush, perhaps supplemented by Rangers, while a MEU drove him and his fighters towards the border and snared him there before he could escape to live a lot longer.  After this brief campaign, we should have withdrawn.

But instead, Mattis kept his mouth shut and allowed America to get bogged down into a two decade COIN effort as part of nation building and winning hearts and minds, all run by social justice warriors, college graduates with guns who wanted to cure the world’s evils.  Petraeus was too busy with his concubine to do much there, while McChrystal brought in ROE that hampered the effort and killed American troops.

McChrystal and his ROE was directly responsible for the boys at Joyce denying support to the Americans at Ganjgal, along with the corollary deaths of 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, 25; Gunnery Sgts. Aaron Kenefick, 30; and Edwin Johnson, 31; and Hospitalman 3rd Class James Layton, 22, and Army Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Westbrook, 41.  Three marines and naval corpsman, 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick, Gunnery Sgt. Edwin W. Johnson, and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class James Layton, were killed after remaining behind to cover the withdrawal of the Afghan soldiers from the ambush site.

Yet after all of that, Petraeus and McChrystal have the temerity to continue to push for gun control over Americans, despite the oath to the constitution they swore to uphold.  There is a sense of entitlement among the military elite, as if experience in strategy and logistics enables them and gives them righteous jurisdiction over American policy.

This is an error made by not only McChrystal, Petraeus, and Mattis, but Trump as well.  Trump’s insult to Mattis is as irrelevant and unimportant as Mattis’ rebuttal.  But this is an error made by many of the American people.  Even the left will engage the error as long as the general pushes policies of which they approve, despite their hatred of everything America.

So why should anyone care about McRaven’s policy preferences?  They shouldn’t, any more than they should care about those of McChrystal or Petraeus or Mattis.  But Americans are always searching for a hero to worship, and they find them in the military elite.

Oh, and there is one more item of interest here.  McRaven is as much of a gun controller as Petraeus and McChrystal.  How do you SpecOps guys feel about that?  And McChrystal?  Didn’t you call him “The Pope?”