by Bob Walsh
Dick's Sporting Goods has taken itself fully out of the hunting retail business in 125 stores. Not only no weapons but no gear directly associated with hunting.
Last year it took these items out of ten stores that were underpreforming in that area. This move actually preceeded a modest bump in Q4 earnings. It is hard to say for sure that it CAUSED the bump.
As far as Dick's is concerned this means firearms, ammunition and clothing and accessories directly associated with hunting. They are seriously considering ashcanning their Field and Stream brand and closing their Field and Stream stores.
Dicks has also shut down its licensing arrangement with Reebok, which sent Adidas-Reebok stock downward.
It is still difficult to say if this political position is going to be a long-term plus or minus for the retailer.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
DON’T FUCK WITH THEM TAGGERS
LAPD Officer Confronted Tagger And Was Fatally Shot At Lincoln Heights Taco Stand, Search Continues For Suspect
LAPPL News Watch
July 29, 2019
The young off-duty officer was eating with friends near a Lincoln Heights taco stand after midnight Saturday when he saw someone tagging a wall. He called out for the person to stop, setting off a chain of events that left Los Angeles Police Department officers mourning the death of one of their own while simultaneously trying to find his killer.
According to law enforcement sources, a group of young men approached Officer Juan Jose Diaz sometime after the tagging exchange and began threatening the 24-year-old, his girlfriend and her two brothers. One of the men lifted his shirt to reveal a handgun. Diaz and his group tried to hurry to their car and drive away to avoid a violent confrontation, a source said. As they got into the vehicle, the gunman opened fire, fatally wounding Diaz and injuring one of his girlfriend’s brothers.
A witness flagged down an LAPD motorcycle officer, who found the two men with gunshot wounds about 1 a.m. at Avenue 26 and Humboldt Street, police said. Diaz was pronounced dead; his girlfriend’s brother was taken to a hospital for treatment.
With just two years on the force, Diaz was most recently assigned to the Professional Standards Bureau.
LAPPL News Watch
July 29, 2019
The young off-duty officer was eating with friends near a Lincoln Heights taco stand after midnight Saturday when he saw someone tagging a wall. He called out for the person to stop, setting off a chain of events that left Los Angeles Police Department officers mourning the death of one of their own while simultaneously trying to find his killer.
According to law enforcement sources, a group of young men approached Officer Juan Jose Diaz sometime after the tagging exchange and began threatening the 24-year-old, his girlfriend and her two brothers. One of the men lifted his shirt to reveal a handgun. Diaz and his group tried to hurry to their car and drive away to avoid a violent confrontation, a source said. As they got into the vehicle, the gunman opened fire, fatally wounding Diaz and injuring one of his girlfriend’s brothers.
A witness flagged down an LAPD motorcycle officer, who found the two men with gunshot wounds about 1 a.m. at Avenue 26 and Humboldt Street, police said. Diaz was pronounced dead; his girlfriend’s brother was taken to a hospital for treatment.
With just two years on the force, Diaz was most recently assigned to the Professional Standards Bureau.
ROYAL PIECE OF TRASH CASHING IN ON HER CATCH OF HARRY
Me-Me-Meghan's shamelessly hypocritical super-woke Vogue stunt proves she cares more about promoting herself than the Royal Family or Britain
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
July 29, 2019
Two months ago, Meghan Markle was reportedly 'too busy caring for her baby' to meet the President of her own country on his state visit to the UK.
Now we discover she was in fact preoccupied with the birth of another elitist production - Vogue magazine.
News that Meghan has spent the past seven months guest-editing the September issue of Vogue is no surprise to me. As a B-list actress, she's probably craved all her adult life to be a Vogue star.
News that Buckingham Palace has let her do it is a big surprise though, because Meghan is now supposed to be a member of the royal family and not a publicity-craving celebrity. And being a royal means you stay out of politics. Yet here is Meghan being about as political as any royal has ever been.
She's chosen 15 female 'trailblazers' and 'changemakers' for the special 'Forces for Change' issue, all picked because they promote 'equality, kindness and open-mindedness'.
The women she's selected represent the greatest hits of virtue-signalling - with a nod to everything from 'body positivity', female empowerment, mental health, disability and race to transgender rights, climate change, diversity, and privilege.
The last one made me laugh out loud.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Mail also reports the piece of trash has been slammed by critics for failing to include the Queen in the magazine and for ignoring nurses, doctors, lawyers and teachers on the cover. Royal watchers have also hit out at Meghan for promoting her friends and 'involving herself in politics'.
And Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir said the cause Meghan Markle is mostly supporting is the Me, Myself and I Foundation.
Vogue wouldn't give Markle three seconds of its time if she hadn't dug her claws into Harry.
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
July 29, 2019
Two months ago, Meghan Markle was reportedly 'too busy caring for her baby' to meet the President of her own country on his state visit to the UK.
Now we discover she was in fact preoccupied with the birth of another elitist production - Vogue magazine.
News that Meghan has spent the past seven months guest-editing the September issue of Vogue is no surprise to me. As a B-list actress, she's probably craved all her adult life to be a Vogue star.
News that Buckingham Palace has let her do it is a big surprise though, because Meghan is now supposed to be a member of the royal family and not a publicity-craving celebrity. And being a royal means you stay out of politics. Yet here is Meghan being about as political as any royal has ever been.
She's chosen 15 female 'trailblazers' and 'changemakers' for the special 'Forces for Change' issue, all picked because they promote 'equality, kindness and open-mindedness'.
The women she's selected represent the greatest hits of virtue-signalling - with a nod to everything from 'body positivity', female empowerment, mental health, disability and race to transgender rights, climate change, diversity, and privilege.
The last one made me laugh out loud.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Mail also reports the piece of trash has been slammed by critics for failing to include the Queen in the magazine and for ignoring nurses, doctors, lawyers and teachers on the cover. Royal watchers have also hit out at Meghan for promoting her friends and 'involving herself in politics'.
And Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir said the cause Meghan Markle is mostly supporting is the Me, Myself and I Foundation.
Vogue wouldn't give Markle three seconds of its time if she hadn't dug her claws into Harry.
TWO ISRAELI GANGSTERS RUBBED OUT IN MEXICO CITY
Israeli shot dead by female assassin in Mexico was prominent underworld figure
The Times of Israel
July 25, 2019
One of the two Israelis shot dead in broad daylight in Mexico City on Wednesday has been identified as a prominent figure in Israel’s criminal underworld, sparking suspicions that the killing was a gangland assassination.
One of the suspected killers, 33-year-old Esperanza Gutierrez Rojano, confessed to the shooting and claimed during police questioning that it was a crime of passion, saying the Israeli victim had cheated on her.
But on Thursday, Israeli media reported that the deceased was a well-known Israeli crime boss, Tel Aviv native Ben Suthi, who had completed a lengthy prison sentence in Israel in February.
Israeli police sources told the Ynet news site that there was “no doubt” the murder was “commissioned by those with interests in Israel.” Israeli police reportedly suspect that an Israeli criminal organization paid a local group in Mexico City to carry out the hit.
“We have no doubt this wasn’t a mistake, nor a romantic crime, but a commissioned and planned assassination,” the police source was quoted as saying.
Rojano’s confession, in which she reportedly said she had acted out of “betrayal and passion,” may have been code for a retribution attack by a Mexican or Israeli criminal organization for some perceived treachery on Suthi’s part, the source said.
The same news site also quoted what it called “underworld sources” as saying that the assassination constituted “an earthquake in the Israeli criminal world…. This wasn’t someone marginal, but a very dominant figure who was very careful and very suspicious.”
The shooting occurred at a coffee shop in the luxury shopping district Artz Pedregal in the southwest of the city on Wednesday afternoon.
According to preliminary police findings reported in Mexican media, Suthi and a second Israeli man, identified as Bat Yam native Alon Azoulay, were sitting at a table in the cafe, while Rojano, in a blond wig, sat next to an apparent accomplice at another table some 10 meters (33 feet) away. After the Israelis ordered drinks, the assassins stood up, walked over to the targets’ table and shot them multiple times with a Glock handgun at point-blank range.
Rojano then ripped off her wig and shirt and fled the shopping center with police in close pursuit.
The officers soon caught up with her and placed her under arrest. An officer was reportedly shot and injured during the chase, apparently by two accomplices outside the mall who were helping Rojano escape.
Rojano’s accomplices, who also fled the scene, were not caught.
Suthi relocated to Mexico a few weeks ago, according to media reports. He is believed to have a daughter in the country, conceived during his last stint there after he fled Israel in 2001, escaping a prison term for murder during a furlough from prison.
The shooting comes a day after another Israeli underworld figure, Erez Akrishevsky, was extradited from Mexico to Israel. Akrishevsky was close to Suthi, and had fled Israel with him in 2001, living for the past 18 years in Mexico under the assumed name Ricardo Lopez before he was caught by Mexican police this month and returned to Israel.
The fatal shooting also comes less than a month after an Israeli DJ was shot dead during a rave in central Mexico. Forty-five-year-old Ronen Dahan, known as DJ Perplex, was one of two people gunned down in the shooting in San Luis PotosÃ, which local media linked to the ongoing drug cartel violence in the country.
EDITOR’S NOTE: El Universal reports that Gutierrez said she was paid $262 by the Jalisco Cartel New Generation to carry out the hit.
__________
Ex Mossad agent with ties to international crime mafias assassinated in Plaza Artz Pedregal
By Sol Prendido from VXT
Borderland Beat
July 27, 2019
Ciudad de México -- In 2005, Benjamin Yeshurun Sutchi was arrested and offered a million pesos to the then undersecretary of the capital police, Gabriel Regino, for his release.
Benjamin Yeshurun Sutchi, one of the two executed Wednesday at Plaza Artz, was a high-level criminal with Mossad training -the intelligence, espionage and counterterrorism agency of Israel - recalled Gabriel Regino, former Undersecretary of Public Security of the Federal District , who arrested him in 2005.
In an interview with Milenio, he recalled that he interrogated Sutchi when they were going to hand him over to the Israeli authorities, as he had a red Interpol file against him; during the trip Sutchi offered him money to let him escape.
“He was a very skilled man, fairly fluent in Spanish. He asked me what was I was going to achieve. What I was going to gain with his arrest, if nothing more than a little star to add on my uniform and that it was better to gain something out of it. I don't remember if it was a million pesos or dollars offered, I don't remember exactly, ”he said.
When recounting what happened 14 years ago, the criminal lawyer mentioned that at that time the CISEN (Center for Investigation and National Security) requested the support of the capital authorities to capture the Israeli criminal. Who allegedly arrived in Mexico in 2005 for work carrying out protection and intelligence for the Jewish community.
However, he says that the Israeli took advantage of the information to extort Mexican Jewish families that he was supposed to protect. In addition, he had a criminal record related to homicides in his country.
After a two-week follow-up, his detention in Mexico City was achieved and the level of danger was such that the police had to have 600 elements to protect his transfer.
The life of this character ran between Mexico and Israel, in Israel he was sought for links with criminal organizations and some cases related to homicides. It was a headache for both Israel and the Jewish community, according to intelligence authorities we had access to. "
"We managed to stop him in Polanco, when he was going to a commercial establishment, this happened around 1 or 2 in the afternoon," he said.
The Times of Israel
July 25, 2019
One of the two Israelis shot dead in broad daylight in Mexico City on Wednesday has been identified as a prominent figure in Israel’s criminal underworld, sparking suspicions that the killing was a gangland assassination.
One of the suspected killers, 33-year-old Esperanza Gutierrez Rojano, confessed to the shooting and claimed during police questioning that it was a crime of passion, saying the Israeli victim had cheated on her.
But on Thursday, Israeli media reported that the deceased was a well-known Israeli crime boss, Tel Aviv native Ben Suthi, who had completed a lengthy prison sentence in Israel in February.
Israeli police sources told the Ynet news site that there was “no doubt” the murder was “commissioned by those with interests in Israel.” Israeli police reportedly suspect that an Israeli criminal organization paid a local group in Mexico City to carry out the hit.
“We have no doubt this wasn’t a mistake, nor a romantic crime, but a commissioned and planned assassination,” the police source was quoted as saying.
Rojano’s confession, in which she reportedly said she had acted out of “betrayal and passion,” may have been code for a retribution attack by a Mexican or Israeli criminal organization for some perceived treachery on Suthi’s part, the source said.
The same news site also quoted what it called “underworld sources” as saying that the assassination constituted “an earthquake in the Israeli criminal world…. This wasn’t someone marginal, but a very dominant figure who was very careful and very suspicious.”
The shooting occurred at a coffee shop in the luxury shopping district Artz Pedregal in the southwest of the city on Wednesday afternoon.
According to preliminary police findings reported in Mexican media, Suthi and a second Israeli man, identified as Bat Yam native Alon Azoulay, were sitting at a table in the cafe, while Rojano, in a blond wig, sat next to an apparent accomplice at another table some 10 meters (33 feet) away. After the Israelis ordered drinks, the assassins stood up, walked over to the targets’ table and shot them multiple times with a Glock handgun at point-blank range.
Rojano then ripped off her wig and shirt and fled the shopping center with police in close pursuit.
The officers soon caught up with her and placed her under arrest. An officer was reportedly shot and injured during the chase, apparently by two accomplices outside the mall who were helping Rojano escape.
Rojano’s accomplices, who also fled the scene, were not caught.
Suthi relocated to Mexico a few weeks ago, according to media reports. He is believed to have a daughter in the country, conceived during his last stint there after he fled Israel in 2001, escaping a prison term for murder during a furlough from prison.
The shooting comes a day after another Israeli underworld figure, Erez Akrishevsky, was extradited from Mexico to Israel. Akrishevsky was close to Suthi, and had fled Israel with him in 2001, living for the past 18 years in Mexico under the assumed name Ricardo Lopez before he was caught by Mexican police this month and returned to Israel.
The fatal shooting also comes less than a month after an Israeli DJ was shot dead during a rave in central Mexico. Forty-five-year-old Ronen Dahan, known as DJ Perplex, was one of two people gunned down in the shooting in San Luis PotosÃ, which local media linked to the ongoing drug cartel violence in the country.
EDITOR’S NOTE: El Universal reports that Gutierrez said she was paid $262 by the Jalisco Cartel New Generation to carry out the hit.
__________
Ex Mossad agent with ties to international crime mafias assassinated in Plaza Artz Pedregal
By Sol Prendido from VXT
Borderland Beat
July 27, 2019
Ciudad de México -- In 2005, Benjamin Yeshurun Sutchi was arrested and offered a million pesos to the then undersecretary of the capital police, Gabriel Regino, for his release.
Benjamin Yeshurun Sutchi, one of the two executed Wednesday at Plaza Artz, was a high-level criminal with Mossad training -the intelligence, espionage and counterterrorism agency of Israel - recalled Gabriel Regino, former Undersecretary of Public Security of the Federal District , who arrested him in 2005.
In an interview with Milenio, he recalled that he interrogated Sutchi when they were going to hand him over to the Israeli authorities, as he had a red Interpol file against him; during the trip Sutchi offered him money to let him escape.
“He was a very skilled man, fairly fluent in Spanish. He asked me what was I was going to achieve. What I was going to gain with his arrest, if nothing more than a little star to add on my uniform and that it was better to gain something out of it. I don't remember if it was a million pesos or dollars offered, I don't remember exactly, ”he said.
When recounting what happened 14 years ago, the criminal lawyer mentioned that at that time the CISEN (Center for Investigation and National Security) requested the support of the capital authorities to capture the Israeli criminal. Who allegedly arrived in Mexico in 2005 for work carrying out protection and intelligence for the Jewish community.
However, he says that the Israeli took advantage of the information to extort Mexican Jewish families that he was supposed to protect. In addition, he had a criminal record related to homicides in his country.
After a two-week follow-up, his detention in Mexico City was achieved and the level of danger was such that the police had to have 600 elements to protect his transfer.
The life of this character ran between Mexico and Israel, in Israel he was sought for links with criminal organizations and some cases related to homicides. It was a headache for both Israel and the Jewish community, according to intelligence authorities we had access to. "
"We managed to stop him in Polanco, when he was going to a commercial establishment, this happened around 1 or 2 in the afternoon," he said.
THREE CARTEL MEMBERS BUSTED IN ARIZONA, MORE THAN $200,000 WORTH OF DRUGS SEIZED
Multiple cartel members arrested around the Valley after months long operation
BY Zach Crenshaw and Joe Enea
ABC 15
July 26, 2019
MESA, AZ — A federal and local drug task force has arrested three members of the Sinaloa Cartel living in the Valley.
During the six month investigation, the agents took more than $200,000 worth of drugs from the operation and intercepted more than $75,000 in cash.
Starting in January, a DEA task force coordinated an investigation with Scottsdale police to target members of the cartel operating out of Mesa. The organization imports cocaine, meth, heroin, and fentanyl-laced pills from Mexico and exports illegal drug money back across the border, according to court documents.
Investigators identified Carlos Armando Perez Gutierrez, 38, as a member who stays at a drug stash house near Hayden and McDowell roads. Investigators say Gutierrez directed a vehicle into his backyard where kilos of drugs were unloaded. The car was allegedly loaded with boxes of ammunition, hidden in a secret compartment in the radiator.
Another member, Alfredo Rios, 44, reportedly communicated with another cartel dealer, Ivan Garduno Valencia, 35, saying the drugs had arrived and they "looked good." Investigators say Rios told Valencia to meet him at a Mesa tire shop and the drugs would be found inside a tire.
Authorities intercepted the vehicle and reportedly found nine bundles of cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl hidden inside the spare tire. The driver allegedly told police that he was taking the shipment to Las Vegas.
“With these three arrests, we were able to identify and arrest a cell head, another leader, as well as a retail dealer. So that's three people in the hierarchy that we were able to take out, in just that short amount of time,” said Erica Curry, spokesperson for the Arizona DEA.
Rios was allegedly found with $40,000 wrapped in three bundles in his car and another $15,000 in cash at his home near Mesa Drive and Southern Avenue.
Detectives said Rios was living at the home with his wife and kids. When law enforcement raided the house, Rios threw a door, with nails sticking out, at the federal agents. They also found two guns in the home, which Rios was prohibited from owning as a convicted felon.
When investigators raided Valencia's house, they reportedly found cocaine and "two jugs of Lidocaine" that is used to cut cocaine, according to court records. Investigators also found ledgers documenting the group's drug sales.
Agents and detectives spent months surveilling the homes and stash houses, as well as intercepting coded communication through a wiretap. They told ABC15 the investigation into the cartel is ongoing.
According to court documents, the drugs were being shipped to Las Vegas, Colorado, Texas, and other states across the country.
All three men are being held on $250,000 cash bonds on charges of narcotic drug sales, money laundering, aggravated assault, and weapons misconduct.
BY Zach Crenshaw and Joe Enea
ABC 15
July 26, 2019
MESA, AZ — A federal and local drug task force has arrested three members of the Sinaloa Cartel living in the Valley.
During the six month investigation, the agents took more than $200,000 worth of drugs from the operation and intercepted more than $75,000 in cash.
Starting in January, a DEA task force coordinated an investigation with Scottsdale police to target members of the cartel operating out of Mesa. The organization imports cocaine, meth, heroin, and fentanyl-laced pills from Mexico and exports illegal drug money back across the border, according to court documents.
Investigators identified Carlos Armando Perez Gutierrez, 38, as a member who stays at a drug stash house near Hayden and McDowell roads. Investigators say Gutierrez directed a vehicle into his backyard where kilos of drugs were unloaded. The car was allegedly loaded with boxes of ammunition, hidden in a secret compartment in the radiator.
Another member, Alfredo Rios, 44, reportedly communicated with another cartel dealer, Ivan Garduno Valencia, 35, saying the drugs had arrived and they "looked good." Investigators say Rios told Valencia to meet him at a Mesa tire shop and the drugs would be found inside a tire.
Authorities intercepted the vehicle and reportedly found nine bundles of cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl hidden inside the spare tire. The driver allegedly told police that he was taking the shipment to Las Vegas.
“With these three arrests, we were able to identify and arrest a cell head, another leader, as well as a retail dealer. So that's three people in the hierarchy that we were able to take out, in just that short amount of time,” said Erica Curry, spokesperson for the Arizona DEA.
Rios was allegedly found with $40,000 wrapped in three bundles in his car and another $15,000 in cash at his home near Mesa Drive and Southern Avenue.
Detectives said Rios was living at the home with his wife and kids. When law enforcement raided the house, Rios threw a door, with nails sticking out, at the federal agents. They also found two guns in the home, which Rios was prohibited from owning as a convicted felon.
When investigators raided Valencia's house, they reportedly found cocaine and "two jugs of Lidocaine" that is used to cut cocaine, according to court records. Investigators also found ledgers documenting the group's drug sales.
Agents and detectives spent months surveilling the homes and stash houses, as well as intercepting coded communication through a wiretap. They told ABC15 the investigation into the cartel is ongoing.
According to court documents, the drugs were being shipped to Las Vegas, Colorado, Texas, and other states across the country.
All three men are being held on $250,000 cash bonds on charges of narcotic drug sales, money laundering, aggravated assault, and weapons misconduct.
TRANSPORTING FENTANYL PAID MORE THAN HIS MEXICAN POLICE SALARY
Former Mexican Police Officer Charged with Trafficking Enough Fentanyl to Kill 10 Million
DEA
July 26, 2019
A federal grand jury in Amarillo, Texas has indicted a former Mexican municipal police officer for fentanyl trafficking, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox.
In a superseding indictment filed Thursday evening, Assmir Contreras-Martinez, 30, of Tucson, Arizona, was charged with conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin.
He was allegedly discovered with roughly 33 kilograms of the drug – likely enough to kill more than 10 million people, according to DEA experts.
“Fentanyl is devastating communities across the country,” said U.S. Attorney Nealy Cox. “We cannot tolerate the trafficking of this deadly drug through North Texas— especially by those who are charged with protecting our communities, foreign or domestic.”
“Fentanyl is the number one threat causing our opioid epidemic in the United States,” said Clyde E. Shelley, Jr., DEA Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Division. “This seizure alone has potentially save millions of lives.”
According to a criminal complaint filed earlier this summer, Mr. Contreras-Martinez was pulled over by a Texas DPS trooper driving eastbound on Interstate 40 in Amarillo in May 2019.
A search of his vehicle, a 2007 Ford Explorer, allegedly revealed approximately 33 kilograms of a white powdery substance, which the trooper suspected to be drugs, likely cocaine. Subsequent testing revealed the substance was actually fentanyl.
After being advised of his rights, Mr. Contreras-Martinez allegedly admitted he was paid $6,000 to transport illegal contraband from California to Florida. This was his second such trip, he said.
During that interview, Mr. Contreras-Martinez allegedly stated that before his unlawful immigration to the United States seven months prior, he had been employed for eight years as a municipal police officer in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico.
An indictment is a formal accusation of criminal conduct, not evidence, and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
If convicted, Mr. Contreras-Martinez faces 30 years to life in federal prison, and may face deportation proceedings after serving his sentence.
Overdoses involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl killed almost 32,000 Americans last year, according to provisional data released by the CDC last week. Because of the drug’s deadly potency, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas has a zero-tolerance policy on fentanyl, taking federally any case that involves the substance or its unlawful analogues, no matter the quantity.
The Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration conducted the above investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Anna Marie Bell is prosecuting the case.
DEA
July 26, 2019
A federal grand jury in Amarillo, Texas has indicted a former Mexican municipal police officer for fentanyl trafficking, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox.
In a superseding indictment filed Thursday evening, Assmir Contreras-Martinez, 30, of Tucson, Arizona, was charged with conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin.
He was allegedly discovered with roughly 33 kilograms of the drug – likely enough to kill more than 10 million people, according to DEA experts.
“Fentanyl is devastating communities across the country,” said U.S. Attorney Nealy Cox. “We cannot tolerate the trafficking of this deadly drug through North Texas— especially by those who are charged with protecting our communities, foreign or domestic.”
“Fentanyl is the number one threat causing our opioid epidemic in the United States,” said Clyde E. Shelley, Jr., DEA Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Division. “This seizure alone has potentially save millions of lives.”
According to a criminal complaint filed earlier this summer, Mr. Contreras-Martinez was pulled over by a Texas DPS trooper driving eastbound on Interstate 40 in Amarillo in May 2019.
A search of his vehicle, a 2007 Ford Explorer, allegedly revealed approximately 33 kilograms of a white powdery substance, which the trooper suspected to be drugs, likely cocaine. Subsequent testing revealed the substance was actually fentanyl.
After being advised of his rights, Mr. Contreras-Martinez allegedly admitted he was paid $6,000 to transport illegal contraband from California to Florida. This was his second such trip, he said.
During that interview, Mr. Contreras-Martinez allegedly stated that before his unlawful immigration to the United States seven months prior, he had been employed for eight years as a municipal police officer in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico.
An indictment is a formal accusation of criminal conduct, not evidence, and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
If convicted, Mr. Contreras-Martinez faces 30 years to life in federal prison, and may face deportation proceedings after serving his sentence.
Overdoses involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl killed almost 32,000 Americans last year, according to provisional data released by the CDC last week. Because of the drug’s deadly potency, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas has a zero-tolerance policy on fentanyl, taking federally any case that involves the substance or its unlawful analogues, no matter the quantity.
The Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration conducted the above investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Anna Marie Bell is prosecuting the case.
Monday, July 29, 2019
GUNFIGHT AT GILROY GARLIC FESTIVAL
by Bob Walsh
OK, it wasn't the Gunfight at the O K Corral but it was remarkable for a yuppie-fest. On Sunday at least one shooter started throwing lead at the third and final day of THE place to be in Gilroy, CA if you like garlic ice cream.
Originally 11 people were reported down. That could have been right, but only five are known to have gunshot injuries. Agents from BATFE responded, which is sort of strange I would think.
People were cutting fences to get out of the venue, Christmas Hill Park. (Strange, I hardly ever carry heavy-duty wire cutters to me when I go to these sort of things. I guess I am getting old.)
This information is very preliminary and could easily be way off.
EDITOR'S NOTE: NBC reports that at least three people were killed, including a 6-year-old boy, and 12 others wounded. The suspect was shot and killed by the police.
OK, it wasn't the Gunfight at the O K Corral but it was remarkable for a yuppie-fest. On Sunday at least one shooter started throwing lead at the third and final day of THE place to be in Gilroy, CA if you like garlic ice cream.
Originally 11 people were reported down. That could have been right, but only five are known to have gunshot injuries. Agents from BATFE responded, which is sort of strange I would think.
People were cutting fences to get out of the venue, Christmas Hill Park. (Strange, I hardly ever carry heavy-duty wire cutters to me when I go to these sort of things. I guess I am getting old.)
This information is very preliminary and could easily be way off.
EDITOR'S NOTE: NBC reports that at least three people were killed, including a 6-year-old boy, and 12 others wounded. The suspect was shot and killed by the police.
SO, WILL THEY HANG TOGETHER ?
by Bob Walsh
Lori Laughlin and her husband Mossimo Gianulli are continuing to hang tough and have separate lawyers from the same law firm and intend to present a united defense against charges related to the college admissions scandal.
The couple are expected to appear in court in late August and to waive their rights to separate trials.
A total of 50 people have been criminally charged in the case. Several have already plead out.
The actress and her designer husband face possibly up to 20 years in the slammer if convicted on all charges.
LIFETIME channel productions is already preparing a movie on the scandal. I wonder if Laughlin will be asked to play herself? (I sort of doubt it.)
Lori Laughlin and her husband Mossimo Gianulli are continuing to hang tough and have separate lawyers from the same law firm and intend to present a united defense against charges related to the college admissions scandal.
The couple are expected to appear in court in late August and to waive their rights to separate trials.
A total of 50 people have been criminally charged in the case. Several have already plead out.
The actress and her designer husband face possibly up to 20 years in the slammer if convicted on all charges.
LIFETIME channel productions is already preparing a movie on the scandal. I wonder if Laughlin will be asked to play herself? (I sort of doubt it.)
NIKE IS IN THE GRASP OF AN IGNORANT ASSHOLE
Betsy Ross
(Sent to me by a friend.)
She was a Quaker (she didn't own slaves)
She married a man her family disapproved of. So they disowned her.
She learned a trade. Upholstery.
She and her husband opened a store.
Then war broke out and her husband left to fight for the colonies. He died in battle.
She kept the store running by making regimental flags for the war effort. She married again.
This time to a man who was fighting the British by sea. He also died
She kept sewing and running the store. Her home was taken over by the British when they occupied Philadelphia.
She was a patriot.
She lost two husbands to the war and at that time in history, she learned a trade and was able to take care of herself and her children.
So that flag represents the birth of our country and in the case of Ross, early feminism!!
She's a female icon!!
This flag has nothing to do with slavery or police brutality against black men.
Nike made the wrong move. Again.
And Kaepernick is still an ignorant asshole.
(Sent to me by a friend.)
She was a Quaker (she didn't own slaves)
She married a man her family disapproved of. So they disowned her.
She learned a trade. Upholstery.
She and her husband opened a store.
Then war broke out and her husband left to fight for the colonies. He died in battle.
She kept the store running by making regimental flags for the war effort. She married again.
This time to a man who was fighting the British by sea. He also died
She kept sewing and running the store. Her home was taken over by the British when they occupied Philadelphia.
She was a patriot.
She lost two husbands to the war and at that time in history, she learned a trade and was able to take care of herself and her children.
So that flag represents the birth of our country and in the case of Ross, early feminism!!
She's a female icon!!
This flag has nothing to do with slavery or police brutality against black men.
Nike made the wrong move. Again.
And Kaepernick is still an ignorant asshole.
ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM FLY BACK AND FORTH
Trump throws 'Squad' feud back at Pelosi after 'racist' accusation: 'Democrats always play the race card'
By Ronn Blitzer
Fox News
July 28, 2019
President Trump is defending himself against accusations of racism, claiming he’s just the latest target of a party that plays the “race card,” as he leveled criticism against Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
Trump called out Cummings on Saturday, slamming him as a “brutal bully” for how he spoke to border patrol officials, and said that the congressman’s Baltimore district is in “FAR WORSE” shape than the situation at the southern border. That rebuke resulted in claims of racism from Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Trump pointed out that he’s hardly the first to get accused of racism, with the speaker herself recently in the middle of a similar controversy.
“Someone please explain to Nancy Pelosi, who was recently called racist by those in her own party, that there is nothing wrong with bringing out the very obvious fact that Congressman Elijah Cummings has done a very poor job for his district and the City of Baltimore. Just take a look, the facts speak far louder than words!” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “The Democrats always play the Race Card, when in fact they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people,” he added.
The president appeared to be referring to how House Speaker Pelosi was the target of a thinly veiled accusation of racism when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused her of “singling out” women of color. That was after Pelosi dismissed Ocasio-Cortez and her “Squad” -- that includes Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley -- as being more influential on social media than in Congress. Trump defended Pelosi at the time.
On Saturday, Pelosi stood by Cummings and the city of Baltimore, where she was born, and rebuked Trump, calling his remarks "racist."
“Rep. Cummings is a champion in the Congress and the country for civil rights and economic justice, a beloved leader in Baltimore, and deeply valued colleague,” she tweeted. “We all reject racist attacks against him and support his steadfast leadership.”
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also called Trump's comments "ugly and racist" during a campaign stop on Saturday.
Trump doubled down on his comments against Cummings Saturday afternoon, tweeting, "Elijah Cummings spends all of his time trying to hurt innocent people through 'Oversight.' He does NOTHING for his very poor, very dangerous and very badly run district!" The tweet included a video purporting to show a rundown area of West Baltimore.
The video included a female voice lamenting that "they're worried about the kids at the border, but this is how actual American citizens got to live and deal with," she added.
Trump tweeted a similar-appearing video late Saturday, asking: ".@RepCummings, why don’t you focus on your district!?"
"Mr. President, I go home to my district daily," Cummings tweeted in response to Trump's initial criticism. "Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents."
Trump took another shot at Pelosi Sunday morning, saying: “Speaking of failing badly, has anyone seen what is happening to Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco. It is not even recognizeable lately. Something must be done before it is too late. The Dems should stop wasting time on the Witch Hunt Hoax and start focusing on our Country!”
EDITOR’S NOE: Trump, like many of us, may very well be a racist, but he did not attack AOC’s squad or Cummings because they were people of color, he attacked them for what they have been shrieking about.
For instance, during his House committee hearing last week, Cummings screamed out loud at acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan: “You feel like you’re doing a great job, right? What does that mean? What does that mean? When a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower? Come on man. What’s that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings.”
Trump was right in attacking Cummings for screaming at McAleenan and for pulling that children sitting in their own shit horseshit out of a hat. I'm sure he would have badmouthed Cummings every bit as much if he was white.
By Ronn Blitzer
Fox News
July 28, 2019
President Trump is defending himself against accusations of racism, claiming he’s just the latest target of a party that plays the “race card,” as he leveled criticism against Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
Trump called out Cummings on Saturday, slamming him as a “brutal bully” for how he spoke to border patrol officials, and said that the congressman’s Baltimore district is in “FAR WORSE” shape than the situation at the southern border. That rebuke resulted in claims of racism from Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Trump pointed out that he’s hardly the first to get accused of racism, with the speaker herself recently in the middle of a similar controversy.
“Someone please explain to Nancy Pelosi, who was recently called racist by those in her own party, that there is nothing wrong with bringing out the very obvious fact that Congressman Elijah Cummings has done a very poor job for his district and the City of Baltimore. Just take a look, the facts speak far louder than words!” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “The Democrats always play the Race Card, when in fact they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people,” he added.
The president appeared to be referring to how House Speaker Pelosi was the target of a thinly veiled accusation of racism when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused her of “singling out” women of color. That was after Pelosi dismissed Ocasio-Cortez and her “Squad” -- that includes Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley -- as being more influential on social media than in Congress. Trump defended Pelosi at the time.
On Saturday, Pelosi stood by Cummings and the city of Baltimore, where she was born, and rebuked Trump, calling his remarks "racist."
“Rep. Cummings is a champion in the Congress and the country for civil rights and economic justice, a beloved leader in Baltimore, and deeply valued colleague,” she tweeted. “We all reject racist attacks against him and support his steadfast leadership.”
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also called Trump's comments "ugly and racist" during a campaign stop on Saturday.
Trump doubled down on his comments against Cummings Saturday afternoon, tweeting, "Elijah Cummings spends all of his time trying to hurt innocent people through 'Oversight.' He does NOTHING for his very poor, very dangerous and very badly run district!" The tweet included a video purporting to show a rundown area of West Baltimore.
The video included a female voice lamenting that "they're worried about the kids at the border, but this is how actual American citizens got to live and deal with," she added.
Trump tweeted a similar-appearing video late Saturday, asking: ".@RepCummings, why don’t you focus on your district!?"
"Mr. President, I go home to my district daily," Cummings tweeted in response to Trump's initial criticism. "Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents."
Trump took another shot at Pelosi Sunday morning, saying: “Speaking of failing badly, has anyone seen what is happening to Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco. It is not even recognizeable lately. Something must be done before it is too late. The Dems should stop wasting time on the Witch Hunt Hoax and start focusing on our Country!”
EDITOR’S NOE: Trump, like many of us, may very well be a racist, but he did not attack AOC’s squad or Cummings because they were people of color, he attacked them for what they have been shrieking about.
For instance, during his House committee hearing last week, Cummings screamed out loud at acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan: “You feel like you’re doing a great job, right? What does that mean? What does that mean? When a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower? Come on man. What’s that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings.”
Trump was right in attacking Cummings for screaming at McAleenan and for pulling that children sitting in their own shit horseshit out of a hat. I'm sure he would have badmouthed Cummings every bit as much if he was white.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE LEFTWARD MARCH
As with Nixon, Democrats mistake Trump for an extremist. That in turn drives them to extremes
By Barton Swaim
The Wall Street Journal
July 28, 2019
What has caused the Democratic Party to run so far, so fast to the left? You could answer that question by recourse to a variety of indicators: demographic, historical, economic, technological. What you can’t do is deny the premise. The abolition of private health insurance, a 70% top income-tax rate, an annual tax on wealth, the socialization of higher education, the elimination of border enforcement (and thus of borders), reparations for slavery, a return to forced busing, a wholesale remaking of the nation’s economy to fight climate change—all are openly proposed and discussed by the party’s leaders.
Add to these proposals the almost daily exhibitions of radicalism by Democratic officeholders and their admirers and allies: requiring that manholes be termed “maintenance holes,” renaming buildings named for American presidents, defending the bizarre notion that the Betsy Ross flag might be a symbol of bigotry and shame, banning straws, calling any military parade fascist. That large segments of the Democratic Party have suddenly radicalized is undeniable. But what’s driving the change?
I am partial to a psychological interpretation. Donald Trump has given Americans on the political left the emotional license to embrace their craziest, most fanciful ideas. They might have been inclined to express these ideas cautiously or not at all if someone other than Mr. Trump were president. But he is president, and they must have everything they’ve ever wanted or ever thought they might want, now.
The reason for this response, if I’m right, isn’t so much that progressives hate Mr. Trump. They hated George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan with an almost equal intensity. (Republicans hated Barack Obama and Bill Clinton with equal fervor—Democrats have no monopoly on irrational hatred.) What’s allowed progressives to give way to their most radical urges isn’t simple hatred but a peculiar notion about the 45th president.
In the progressive mind, Mr. Trump is every conservative’s dream come true. He is, they imagine, what Republicans have always secretly longed for in a president. He fetishizes wealth. He is cruel. He is a proud philistine and a chauvinist. He lies when it’s convenient. And—above all—he is a racist.
I don’t say every progressive thinks of conservatives in this way in all respects, but Mr. Trump, as progressives understand him, is close to what they’ve always suspected conservatives to be.
Of course, Mr. Trump is vastly more complicated and interesting than progressives give him credit for—few men in history, and certainly not Donald Trump, are as wantonly evil as today’s progressives believe Mr. Trump is. And in any case he isn’t remotely close to an ideal conservative. What led a majority of Republicans to choose this former Democrat and sexual libertine as their nominee in 2016 was a complicated set of circumstances that no one fully understands. Recall that he’d run for president before and got nowhere. That he wasn’t Republicans’ ideal candidate in 2016 is apparent by the large numbers of conservatives who couldn’t support him even after his nomination. Some still don’t. In the progressive imagination, though, Mr. Trump isconservatism: heartless, lacking all conviction, dismissive of nuance, interested only in self-advancement, arrogant.
Progressives’ emotional reasoning appears to be thus: Republicans got everything they wanted in 2016. We have a right to do the same. Whereas they achieved pure evil, we will achieve pure good. No more compromising with the other side. No more concessions to reality. Republicans hit their jackpot in 2016. We will hit ours in 2020.
Something similar happened in 1972. Richard Nixon was never the embodiment of conservatism liberals thought he was. The relationship between Nixon and conservatives (conservative intellectuals, certainly) was always uneasy. By the middle of his first term, many conservatives no longer supported the president at all and hoped, vainly, that the more ideologically consistent Rep. John Ashbrook could mount a credible challenge in the ’72 primaries. Nonetheless for liberals, Nixon was the embodiment of the Republican ideal: ruthless, shifty, retrogressive, boorish, populist in the worst sense.
There was some truth in that view of Nixon, just as there is some truth in the view of Mr. Trump held by progressives today. But Nixon was far more than the sum of his vices, and so is Mr. Trump.
The Democrats’ simpleminded view of Nixon, though, pushed them over the edge in 1972. The leftward lurch made no sense except as a psychological response to a nonexistent monster. If Republicans had achieved everything they wanted in 1968—ensconcing an unprincipled populist reactionary in the White House—then they, too, would pursue their most radical dreams with untrammeled enthusiasm. The result: An unlikable and beatable Republican exceeded 60% of the popular vote and carried 49 states.
The circumstances are totally different now, clearly. Mr. Trump will not win in a landslide. But he may just win in 2020 for the same reason Nixon crushed George McGovern in 1972: Democrats thought conservatives had achieved their wildest dreams four years before and tried to do the same. If only they had studied their opponents a bit more closely.
By Barton Swaim
The Wall Street Journal
July 28, 2019
What has caused the Democratic Party to run so far, so fast to the left? You could answer that question by recourse to a variety of indicators: demographic, historical, economic, technological. What you can’t do is deny the premise. The abolition of private health insurance, a 70% top income-tax rate, an annual tax on wealth, the socialization of higher education, the elimination of border enforcement (and thus of borders), reparations for slavery, a return to forced busing, a wholesale remaking of the nation’s economy to fight climate change—all are openly proposed and discussed by the party’s leaders.
Add to these proposals the almost daily exhibitions of radicalism by Democratic officeholders and their admirers and allies: requiring that manholes be termed “maintenance holes,” renaming buildings named for American presidents, defending the bizarre notion that the Betsy Ross flag might be a symbol of bigotry and shame, banning straws, calling any military parade fascist. That large segments of the Democratic Party have suddenly radicalized is undeniable. But what’s driving the change?
I am partial to a psychological interpretation. Donald Trump has given Americans on the political left the emotional license to embrace their craziest, most fanciful ideas. They might have been inclined to express these ideas cautiously or not at all if someone other than Mr. Trump were president. But he is president, and they must have everything they’ve ever wanted or ever thought they might want, now.
The reason for this response, if I’m right, isn’t so much that progressives hate Mr. Trump. They hated George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan with an almost equal intensity. (Republicans hated Barack Obama and Bill Clinton with equal fervor—Democrats have no monopoly on irrational hatred.) What’s allowed progressives to give way to their most radical urges isn’t simple hatred but a peculiar notion about the 45th president.
In the progressive mind, Mr. Trump is every conservative’s dream come true. He is, they imagine, what Republicans have always secretly longed for in a president. He fetishizes wealth. He is cruel. He is a proud philistine and a chauvinist. He lies when it’s convenient. And—above all—he is a racist.
I don’t say every progressive thinks of conservatives in this way in all respects, but Mr. Trump, as progressives understand him, is close to what they’ve always suspected conservatives to be.
Of course, Mr. Trump is vastly more complicated and interesting than progressives give him credit for—few men in history, and certainly not Donald Trump, are as wantonly evil as today’s progressives believe Mr. Trump is. And in any case he isn’t remotely close to an ideal conservative. What led a majority of Republicans to choose this former Democrat and sexual libertine as their nominee in 2016 was a complicated set of circumstances that no one fully understands. Recall that he’d run for president before and got nowhere. That he wasn’t Republicans’ ideal candidate in 2016 is apparent by the large numbers of conservatives who couldn’t support him even after his nomination. Some still don’t. In the progressive imagination, though, Mr. Trump isconservatism: heartless, lacking all conviction, dismissive of nuance, interested only in self-advancement, arrogant.
Progressives’ emotional reasoning appears to be thus: Republicans got everything they wanted in 2016. We have a right to do the same. Whereas they achieved pure evil, we will achieve pure good. No more compromising with the other side. No more concessions to reality. Republicans hit their jackpot in 2016. We will hit ours in 2020.
Something similar happened in 1972. Richard Nixon was never the embodiment of conservatism liberals thought he was. The relationship between Nixon and conservatives (conservative intellectuals, certainly) was always uneasy. By the middle of his first term, many conservatives no longer supported the president at all and hoped, vainly, that the more ideologically consistent Rep. John Ashbrook could mount a credible challenge in the ’72 primaries. Nonetheless for liberals, Nixon was the embodiment of the Republican ideal: ruthless, shifty, retrogressive, boorish, populist in the worst sense.
There was some truth in that view of Nixon, just as there is some truth in the view of Mr. Trump held by progressives today. But Nixon was far more than the sum of his vices, and so is Mr. Trump.
The Democrats’ simpleminded view of Nixon, though, pushed them over the edge in 1972. The leftward lurch made no sense except as a psychological response to a nonexistent monster. If Republicans had achieved everything they wanted in 1968—ensconcing an unprincipled populist reactionary in the White House—then they, too, would pursue their most radical dreams with untrammeled enthusiasm. The result: An unlikable and beatable Republican exceeded 60% of the popular vote and carried 49 states.
The circumstances are totally different now, clearly. Mr. Trump will not win in a landslide. But he may just win in 2020 for the same reason Nixon crushed George McGovern in 1972: Democrats thought conservatives had achieved their wildest dreams four years before and tried to do the same. If only they had studied their opponents a bit more closely.
SANDERS BELIEVES IN ISRAEL’S ‘ABSOLUTE’ RIGHT TO EXIST, BUT HIS POLICIES WOULD BRING ABOUT THE DEMISE OF THE JEWISH STATE, AND HE MUST KNOW THAT
Sanders says he would ‘absolutely’ consider cutting US military aid
Israel Hayom
July 28, 2019
Vermont Senator and leading 2020 Democratic US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would “absolutely” weigh withholding US military aid to Israel to pressure the Jewish state into making policy changes.
Speaking with Jon Favreau on his Pod Save America podcast, Sanders, according to most polls the second-place Democratic candidate, agreed that the $3.8 billion US military aid package could be used as “leverage” against the Jewish state.
“Our policy cannot just be pro-Israel, pro-Israel, pro-Israel,” Sanders said. “It has got to be pro-region, working with all of the people, all of the countries in that area.”
He emphasized, however, that he believed in Israel’s “absolute” right to peace and security.
“I have family in Israel. I am Jewish. I am not anti-Israel,” he said. “Okay, I believe that the people of Israel have, absolutely, the right to live in peace, independence and security. End of discussion – that is what I fervently believe.”
At the same time, he blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for what he said was the rise of “an extreme right-wing government with many racist tendencies.”
Sanders is largely considered to be among the strongest critics of Israel running for the US presidency. He appeared in June with activists for pro-BDS organization IfNotNow while holding a sign reading “Jews Against Occupation.”
In 2017, Sanders recorded a five-minute video for a Meretz Party conference marking the end of the Six-Day War in 1967 and “50 Years of Occupation,” in which he called the party “Israel’s most prominent political organization” and lamented that “we are now in the 50th year of Israel’s occupation.”
“I know so many of you agree with me when I say: this occupation must end. Peace, real peace, means security not only for every Israeli, but for every Palestinian. It means supporting self-determination, civil rights and economic well-being for both peoples,” he said.
In April 2016, Sanders was one of 17 senators who did not sign a letter to then-President Barack Obama urging him to increase aid to Israel.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Actually, I’m not really sure Israel ‘absolutely’ needs all that military aid. Except for America’s advanced fighter jets, Israel could probably defend itself without that aid.
Israel Hayom
July 28, 2019
Vermont Senator and leading 2020 Democratic US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would “absolutely” weigh withholding US military aid to Israel to pressure the Jewish state into making policy changes.
Speaking with Jon Favreau on his Pod Save America podcast, Sanders, according to most polls the second-place Democratic candidate, agreed that the $3.8 billion US military aid package could be used as “leverage” against the Jewish state.
“Our policy cannot just be pro-Israel, pro-Israel, pro-Israel,” Sanders said. “It has got to be pro-region, working with all of the people, all of the countries in that area.”
He emphasized, however, that he believed in Israel’s “absolute” right to peace and security.
“I have family in Israel. I am Jewish. I am not anti-Israel,” he said. “Okay, I believe that the people of Israel have, absolutely, the right to live in peace, independence and security. End of discussion – that is what I fervently believe.”
At the same time, he blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for what he said was the rise of “an extreme right-wing government with many racist tendencies.”
Sanders is largely considered to be among the strongest critics of Israel running for the US presidency. He appeared in June with activists for pro-BDS organization IfNotNow while holding a sign reading “Jews Against Occupation.”
In 2017, Sanders recorded a five-minute video for a Meretz Party conference marking the end of the Six-Day War in 1967 and “50 Years of Occupation,” in which he called the party “Israel’s most prominent political organization” and lamented that “we are now in the 50th year of Israel’s occupation.”
“I know so many of you agree with me when I say: this occupation must end. Peace, real peace, means security not only for every Israeli, but for every Palestinian. It means supporting self-determination, civil rights and economic well-being for both peoples,” he said.
In April 2016, Sanders was one of 17 senators who did not sign a letter to then-President Barack Obama urging him to increase aid to Israel.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Actually, I’m not really sure Israel ‘absolutely’ needs all that military aid. Except for America’s advanced fighter jets, Israel could probably defend itself without that aid.
EVERYONE IS SMART EXCEPT TRUMP
By Dov Fischer
The American Spectator
July 18, 2019
It really is quite simple. Everyone is smart except Donald J. Trump. That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected President. Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do.
They could not stand up to Matt Lauer at NBC. They could not stand up to Charlie Rose at CBS. They could not stand up to Mark Halperin at NBC. Nor up to Leon Wieseltier at the New Republic, nor Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, nor Michael Oreskes at NPR, at the New York Times, or at the Associated Press. But — oh, wow! — can they ever stand up to Putin! Only Trump is incapable of negotiating with the Russian tyrant.
Remember the four years when Anderson Cooper was President of the United States? And before that — when the entire Washington Post editorial staff jointly were elected to be President? Remember? Neither do I.
The Seedier Media never have negotiated life and death, not corporate life and death, and not human life and death. They think they know how to negotiate, but they do not know how. They go to a college, are told by peers that they are smart, get some good grades, proceed to a graduate degree in journalism, and get hired as analysts. Now they are experts, ready to take on Putin and the Iranian Ayatollahs at age 30.
That is not the road to expertise in tough dealing. The alternate road is that, along the way, maybe you get forced into some street fights. Sometimes the other guy wins, and sometimes you beat the intestines out of him. Then you deal with grown-ups as you mature, and you learn that people can be nasty, often after they smile and speak softly. You get cheated a few times, played. And you learn. Maybe you become an attorney litigating multi-million-dollar case matters. Say what you will about attorneys, but those years — not the years in law school, not the years drafting legal memoranda, but the years of meeting face-to-face and confronting opposing counsel — those years can teach a great deal. They can teach how to transition from sweet, gentle, diplomatic negotiating to tough negotiating. At some point, with enough tough-nosed experience, you figure out Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” yourself.
Trump’s voters get him because not only is he we, but we are he. We were not snowflaked-for-life by effete professors who themselves never had negotiated tough life-or-death serious deals. Instead we live in the real world, and we know how that works. Not based on social science theories, not based on “conceptual negotiating models.” But based on the people we have met over life and always will hate. That worst boss we ever had. The coworker who tried to sabotage us. We know the sons of bums whom we survived, the dastardly types who are out there, and we learned from those experiences how to deal with them. We won’t have John Kerry soothe us by having James Taylor sing “You’ve Got a Friend” carols.
The Bushes got us into all kinds of messes. The first one killed the economic miracle that Reagan had fashioned. The second one screwed up the Middle East, where Iraq and Iran beautifully were engaged in killing each other for years, and he got us mired into the middle of the muddle. Clinton was too busy with Monica Lewinsky to protect us from Osama bin Laden when we had him in our sights. Hillary gave us Benghazi and more. And Obama and Kerry gave us the Iran Deal, ISIS run amok, America in retreat. All to the daily praise of a media who now attack Trump every minute of every day.
So let us understand a few things:
Negotiating with NATO:
NATO is our friend. They also rip off America. They have been ripping us off forever. We saved their butts — before there even was a NATO — in World War I. They messed up, and 116,456 Americans had to die to save their butts. Then they messed up again for the next two decades because West Europeans are effete and so obsessed with their class manners and their rules of savoir faire and their socialist welfare states and their early retirements that they did not have the character to stand up to Hitler in the 1930s. Peace in our time. So they messed up, and we had to save their butts again. And another 405,399 Americans died for them during World War II. And then we had to rebuild them! And we had to station our boys in Germany and all over their blood-stained continent. So, hey, we love those guys. We love NATO.
And yet they still rip us off. We pay 4% of our gigantic gross domestic product to protect them, and they will not pay a lousy 2% of their GDP towards their own defense. Is there a culture more penny-pinching-cheap-and-stingy than the fine constituents of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? These cheap baseborn prigs will not pay their fare. They are too cheap. They expect America to send boys to die for them in one world war, then another — hundreds of thousands — and then to pay for their NATO defense even a century later.
And then they have the temerity to cheat us further in trade. Long before Trump, they set up tariffs against us for so many things. If the average American knew how badly Europe has been ripping us off for decades with their tariffs, no one in this country would buy anything European again. We would say, as a matter of self-respect and personal pride, “I no longer will buy anything but American, no matter what it costs.”
Every American President has complained about the cheating and imbalance — the NATO penny-pinching-cheapness, the tariff and trade imbalances. In more recent years, the various Bushes complained about it. Even Obama complained about it. But they all did it so gently, so diplomatically. They would deliver the sermon, just as the pastor predictably tells the church-goers on Sunday morning that he is against sin, and the Europeans would sit quietly and nod their heads — nodding from sleeping, not from agreeing — and then they would go back out and sin some more. Another four years of America being suckered and snookered. All they had to do was give Obama a Nobel Peace Prize his ninth month in office and let Kerry ride his bike around Paris.
So Trump did what any effective negotiator would do: he took note of past approaches to NATO and their failures, and correctly determined that the only way to get these penny-pinching-cheap baseborn prigs to pay their freight would be to bulldoze right into their faces, stare them right in their glazed eyes with cameras rolling, and tell them point-blank the equivalent of: “You are the cheapest penny-pinching, miserly, stingy, tightwadded skinflints ever. And it is going to stop on my watch. Whatever it takes from my end, you selfish, curmudgeonly cheap prigs, you are going to pay your fair share. I am not being diplomatic. I am being All-Business: either you start to pay or, wow, are you in for some surprises! And you know what you read in the Fake News: I am crazy! I am out of control! So, lemme see. I know: We will go to trade war! How do you like that? Maybe we even will pull all our troops out of Europe. Hmmm. Yeah, maybe. Why not? Sounds good. Well, let’s see.”
So Trump stuffed it into their quiche-and-schnitzel ingesting faces. And he convinced them — thanks to America’s Seedier Media who are the real secret to the “Legend That is Trump” — that he just might be crazy enough to go to trade war and to pull American boys home. They knew that Clinton and Bush x 2 and Kerry and Hillary and Nobel Laureate Obama never would do it. But they also know that Trump just might. And if they think they are going to find comfort and moderating in his new advisers, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, alongside him….
Nuh-uh.
So CNN and the Washington Post and all the Seedier Media attacked Trump for days: He is destroying the alliance! He attacks our friends!
Baloney. Obama was the one whom the Left Echo Chamber… Chamber… Chamber never called out for attacking our friends — Israel, Britain, so many others — while cozying up to Hugo Chavez, bowing to dictators, and dancing the tango for Raul Castro. Trump is just the opposite: He knows who the friends are, and he wants to maintain and strengthen those friendships. It is no different from a parent telling a 35-year-old son: “I have been supporting you for thirty-five years. I put you through college by signing four years and $100,000 in PLUS Loans. You graduated college fifteen years ago. For fifteen years I have been asking you nicely to look for a job and to start contributing. Instead, you sit home all day playing video games, texting your friends on a smartphone I pay for, and picking little fuzz balls out of your navel. So, look, I love you. You are my flesh and blood. But if you are not employed and earning a paycheck — and contributing to the cost of this household — in six months, we are throwing you out of the house.” That boy is NATO. Trump is Dad. And all of us have been signing for the PLUS Loans.
Negotiating with Putin
Putin is a bad guy. A really bad guy. He is better than Lenin. Better than Stalin, Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Pol Pot, Mao. But he is a really bad guy.
Here’s the thing: Putin is a dictator. He answers to no one. He does whatever he wants. If there arises an opponent, that guy dies. Maybe the opponent gets poked with a poisoned umbrella. Maybe he gets shot on the street. Maybe the opponent is forced to watch Susan Rice interviews telling the world that Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video seen by nine derelicts in Berkeley and that Bowe Berghdal served with honor and distinction. But, one way or another, the opponent dies.
Trump knows this about Putin. And here is what that means:
If you insult Putin in public, like by telling the newsmedia just before or after meeting with him that he is the Butcher of Crimea, and he messed with our elections, and is an overall jerk — then you will get nothing behind closed doors from Putin. Putin will decide “To heck with you, and to heck with the relationship we just forged.” Putin will get even, will take intense personal revenge, even if it is bad for Russia — even if it is bad for Putin. Because there are no institutional reins on him.
But if you go in public and tell everyone that Putin is a nice guy (y’know, just like Kim Jong Un) and that Putin intensely maintains that he did not mess with elections — not sweet little Putey Wutey (even though he obviously did) — then you next can maintain the momentum established beforehand in the private room. You can proceed to remind Putin what you told him privately: that this garbage has to stop — or else. That if he messes in Syria, we will do “X.” If he messes with our Iran boycott, we will do “Y.” We will generate so much oil from hydraulic fracturing and from ANWR and from all our sources that we will glut the market — if not tomorrow, then a year from now. We will send even more lethal offensive military weapons to Ukraine. We can restore the promised shield to Eastern Europe that Obama withdrew. And even if we cannot mess with Russian elections (because they have no elections), they do have computers — and, so help us, we will mess with their technology in a way they cannot imagine. Trump knows from his advisers what we can do. If he sweet-talks Putin in public — just Putin on the Ritz — then everything that Trump has told Putin privately can be reinforced with action, and he even can wedge concessions because, against that background, Putin knows that no one will believe that he made any concessions. Everyone is set to believe that Putin is getting whatever he wants, that Trump understands nothing. So, in that setting, Putin can make concessions and still save face.
That is why Trump talks about him that way. And that is the only possible way to do it when negotiating with a tyrant who has no checks and balances on him. If you embarrass the tyrant publicly, then the tyrant never will make concessions because he will fear that people will say he was intimidated and backed down. And that he never will do. Meanwhile, Trump has expelled 60 Russians from America, reversed Obama policy and sent lethal weapons to Ukraine, and is pressing Germany severely on its pipeline project with Russia.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, Donald Trump is over seventy years old. He has made many mistakes in his life. He still makes some. He is human. But Trump likewise has spent three score and a dozen years learning. He has seen some of his businesses go bankrupt, and he has learned from those experiences to be a billionaire and not let it happen again. No doubt that he has been fooled, outsmarted in years past. And he has learned from life.
He is a tough and smart negotiator. He sizes up his opponent, and he knows that the approach that works best for one is not the same as for another. It does not matter what he says publicly about his negotiating opponent. What matters is what results months later. In his first eighteen months in Washington, this man has turned around the American economy, brought us near full employment, reduced the welfare and food stamp lines, wiped out ISIS in Raqqa, moved America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem, successfully has launched massive deregulation of the economy, has opened oil exploration in ANWR, is rebuilding the military massively, has walked out of the useless Paris Climate Accords that were negotiated by America’s amateurs who always get snookered, canned the disastrous Iran Deal, exited the bogus United Nations Human Rights Council. He has Canada and Mexico convinced he will walk out of NAFTA if they do not pony up, and he has the Europeans convinced he will walk out of NATO if they don’t stop being the cheap and lazy parasitic penny-pinchers they are. He has slashed income taxes, expanded legal protections for college students falsely accused of crimes, has taken real steps to protect religious freedoms and liberties promised in the First Amendment, boldly has taken on the lyme-disease-quality of a legislative mess that he inherited from Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama on immigration, and has appointed a steady line of remarkably brilliant conservative federal judges to sit on the district courts, the circuit appellate courts, and the Supreme Court.
What has Anderson Cooper achieved during that period? Jim Acosta or the editorial staffs of the New York Times and Washington Post? They have not even found the courage and strength to stand up to the coworkers and celebrities within their orbits who abuse sexually or psychologically or emotionally. They have no accomplishments to compare to his. Just their effete opinions, all echoing each other, all echoing, echoing, echoing. They gave us eight years of Nobel Peace Laureate Obama negotiating with the ISIS JV team, calming the rise of the oceans, and healing the planet.
We will take Trump negotiating with Putin any day.
The American Spectator
July 18, 2019
It really is quite simple. Everyone is smart except Donald J. Trump. That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected President. Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do.
They could not stand up to Matt Lauer at NBC. They could not stand up to Charlie Rose at CBS. They could not stand up to Mark Halperin at NBC. Nor up to Leon Wieseltier at the New Republic, nor Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, nor Michael Oreskes at NPR, at the New York Times, or at the Associated Press. But — oh, wow! — can they ever stand up to Putin! Only Trump is incapable of negotiating with the Russian tyrant.
Remember the four years when Anderson Cooper was President of the United States? And before that — when the entire Washington Post editorial staff jointly were elected to be President? Remember? Neither do I.
The Seedier Media never have negotiated life and death, not corporate life and death, and not human life and death. They think they know how to negotiate, but they do not know how. They go to a college, are told by peers that they are smart, get some good grades, proceed to a graduate degree in journalism, and get hired as analysts. Now they are experts, ready to take on Putin and the Iranian Ayatollahs at age 30.
That is not the road to expertise in tough dealing. The alternate road is that, along the way, maybe you get forced into some street fights. Sometimes the other guy wins, and sometimes you beat the intestines out of him. Then you deal with grown-ups as you mature, and you learn that people can be nasty, often after they smile and speak softly. You get cheated a few times, played. And you learn. Maybe you become an attorney litigating multi-million-dollar case matters. Say what you will about attorneys, but those years — not the years in law school, not the years drafting legal memoranda, but the years of meeting face-to-face and confronting opposing counsel — those years can teach a great deal. They can teach how to transition from sweet, gentle, diplomatic negotiating to tough negotiating. At some point, with enough tough-nosed experience, you figure out Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” yourself.
Trump’s voters get him because not only is he we, but we are he. We were not snowflaked-for-life by effete professors who themselves never had negotiated tough life-or-death serious deals. Instead we live in the real world, and we know how that works. Not based on social science theories, not based on “conceptual negotiating models.” But based on the people we have met over life and always will hate. That worst boss we ever had. The coworker who tried to sabotage us. We know the sons of bums whom we survived, the dastardly types who are out there, and we learned from those experiences how to deal with them. We won’t have John Kerry soothe us by having James Taylor sing “You’ve Got a Friend” carols.
The Bushes got us into all kinds of messes. The first one killed the economic miracle that Reagan had fashioned. The second one screwed up the Middle East, where Iraq and Iran beautifully were engaged in killing each other for years, and he got us mired into the middle of the muddle. Clinton was too busy with Monica Lewinsky to protect us from Osama bin Laden when we had him in our sights. Hillary gave us Benghazi and more. And Obama and Kerry gave us the Iran Deal, ISIS run amok, America in retreat. All to the daily praise of a media who now attack Trump every minute of every day.
So let us understand a few things:
Negotiating with NATO:
NATO is our friend. They also rip off America. They have been ripping us off forever. We saved their butts — before there even was a NATO — in World War I. They messed up, and 116,456 Americans had to die to save their butts. Then they messed up again for the next two decades because West Europeans are effete and so obsessed with their class manners and their rules of savoir faire and their socialist welfare states and their early retirements that they did not have the character to stand up to Hitler in the 1930s. Peace in our time. So they messed up, and we had to save their butts again. And another 405,399 Americans died for them during World War II. And then we had to rebuild them! And we had to station our boys in Germany and all over their blood-stained continent. So, hey, we love those guys. We love NATO.
And yet they still rip us off. We pay 4% of our gigantic gross domestic product to protect them, and they will not pay a lousy 2% of their GDP towards their own defense. Is there a culture more penny-pinching-cheap-and-stingy than the fine constituents of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? These cheap baseborn prigs will not pay their fare. They are too cheap. They expect America to send boys to die for them in one world war, then another — hundreds of thousands — and then to pay for their NATO defense even a century later.
And then they have the temerity to cheat us further in trade. Long before Trump, they set up tariffs against us for so many things. If the average American knew how badly Europe has been ripping us off for decades with their tariffs, no one in this country would buy anything European again. We would say, as a matter of self-respect and personal pride, “I no longer will buy anything but American, no matter what it costs.”
Every American President has complained about the cheating and imbalance — the NATO penny-pinching-cheapness, the tariff and trade imbalances. In more recent years, the various Bushes complained about it. Even Obama complained about it. But they all did it so gently, so diplomatically. They would deliver the sermon, just as the pastor predictably tells the church-goers on Sunday morning that he is against sin, and the Europeans would sit quietly and nod their heads — nodding from sleeping, not from agreeing — and then they would go back out and sin some more. Another four years of America being suckered and snookered. All they had to do was give Obama a Nobel Peace Prize his ninth month in office and let Kerry ride his bike around Paris.
So Trump did what any effective negotiator would do: he took note of past approaches to NATO and their failures, and correctly determined that the only way to get these penny-pinching-cheap baseborn prigs to pay their freight would be to bulldoze right into their faces, stare them right in their glazed eyes with cameras rolling, and tell them point-blank the equivalent of: “You are the cheapest penny-pinching, miserly, stingy, tightwadded skinflints ever. And it is going to stop on my watch. Whatever it takes from my end, you selfish, curmudgeonly cheap prigs, you are going to pay your fair share. I am not being diplomatic. I am being All-Business: either you start to pay or, wow, are you in for some surprises! And you know what you read in the Fake News: I am crazy! I am out of control! So, lemme see. I know: We will go to trade war! How do you like that? Maybe we even will pull all our troops out of Europe. Hmmm. Yeah, maybe. Why not? Sounds good. Well, let’s see.”
So Trump stuffed it into their quiche-and-schnitzel ingesting faces. And he convinced them — thanks to America’s Seedier Media who are the real secret to the “Legend That is Trump” — that he just might be crazy enough to go to trade war and to pull American boys home. They knew that Clinton and Bush x 2 and Kerry and Hillary and Nobel Laureate Obama never would do it. But they also know that Trump just might. And if they think they are going to find comfort and moderating in his new advisers, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, alongside him….
Nuh-uh.
So CNN and the Washington Post and all the Seedier Media attacked Trump for days: He is destroying the alliance! He attacks our friends!
Baloney. Obama was the one whom the Left Echo Chamber… Chamber… Chamber never called out for attacking our friends — Israel, Britain, so many others — while cozying up to Hugo Chavez, bowing to dictators, and dancing the tango for Raul Castro. Trump is just the opposite: He knows who the friends are, and he wants to maintain and strengthen those friendships. It is no different from a parent telling a 35-year-old son: “I have been supporting you for thirty-five years. I put you through college by signing four years and $100,000 in PLUS Loans. You graduated college fifteen years ago. For fifteen years I have been asking you nicely to look for a job and to start contributing. Instead, you sit home all day playing video games, texting your friends on a smartphone I pay for, and picking little fuzz balls out of your navel. So, look, I love you. You are my flesh and blood. But if you are not employed and earning a paycheck — and contributing to the cost of this household — in six months, we are throwing you out of the house.” That boy is NATO. Trump is Dad. And all of us have been signing for the PLUS Loans.
Negotiating with Putin
Putin is a bad guy. A really bad guy. He is better than Lenin. Better than Stalin, Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Pol Pot, Mao. But he is a really bad guy.
Here’s the thing: Putin is a dictator. He answers to no one. He does whatever he wants. If there arises an opponent, that guy dies. Maybe the opponent gets poked with a poisoned umbrella. Maybe he gets shot on the street. Maybe the opponent is forced to watch Susan Rice interviews telling the world that Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video seen by nine derelicts in Berkeley and that Bowe Berghdal served with honor and distinction. But, one way or another, the opponent dies.
Trump knows this about Putin. And here is what that means:
If you insult Putin in public, like by telling the newsmedia just before or after meeting with him that he is the Butcher of Crimea, and he messed with our elections, and is an overall jerk — then you will get nothing behind closed doors from Putin. Putin will decide “To heck with you, and to heck with the relationship we just forged.” Putin will get even, will take intense personal revenge, even if it is bad for Russia — even if it is bad for Putin. Because there are no institutional reins on him.
But if you go in public and tell everyone that Putin is a nice guy (y’know, just like Kim Jong Un) and that Putin intensely maintains that he did not mess with elections — not sweet little Putey Wutey (even though he obviously did) — then you next can maintain the momentum established beforehand in the private room. You can proceed to remind Putin what you told him privately: that this garbage has to stop — or else. That if he messes in Syria, we will do “X.” If he messes with our Iran boycott, we will do “Y.” We will generate so much oil from hydraulic fracturing and from ANWR and from all our sources that we will glut the market — if not tomorrow, then a year from now. We will send even more lethal offensive military weapons to Ukraine. We can restore the promised shield to Eastern Europe that Obama withdrew. And even if we cannot mess with Russian elections (because they have no elections), they do have computers — and, so help us, we will mess with their technology in a way they cannot imagine. Trump knows from his advisers what we can do. If he sweet-talks Putin in public — just Putin on the Ritz — then everything that Trump has told Putin privately can be reinforced with action, and he even can wedge concessions because, against that background, Putin knows that no one will believe that he made any concessions. Everyone is set to believe that Putin is getting whatever he wants, that Trump understands nothing. So, in that setting, Putin can make concessions and still save face.
That is why Trump talks about him that way. And that is the only possible way to do it when negotiating with a tyrant who has no checks and balances on him. If you embarrass the tyrant publicly, then the tyrant never will make concessions because he will fear that people will say he was intimidated and backed down. And that he never will do. Meanwhile, Trump has expelled 60 Russians from America, reversed Obama policy and sent lethal weapons to Ukraine, and is pressing Germany severely on its pipeline project with Russia.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, Donald Trump is over seventy years old. He has made many mistakes in his life. He still makes some. He is human. But Trump likewise has spent three score and a dozen years learning. He has seen some of his businesses go bankrupt, and he has learned from those experiences to be a billionaire and not let it happen again. No doubt that he has been fooled, outsmarted in years past. And he has learned from life.
He is a tough and smart negotiator. He sizes up his opponent, and he knows that the approach that works best for one is not the same as for another. It does not matter what he says publicly about his negotiating opponent. What matters is what results months later. In his first eighteen months in Washington, this man has turned around the American economy, brought us near full employment, reduced the welfare and food stamp lines, wiped out ISIS in Raqqa, moved America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem, successfully has launched massive deregulation of the economy, has opened oil exploration in ANWR, is rebuilding the military massively, has walked out of the useless Paris Climate Accords that were negotiated by America’s amateurs who always get snookered, canned the disastrous Iran Deal, exited the bogus United Nations Human Rights Council. He has Canada and Mexico convinced he will walk out of NAFTA if they do not pony up, and he has the Europeans convinced he will walk out of NATO if they don’t stop being the cheap and lazy parasitic penny-pinchers they are. He has slashed income taxes, expanded legal protections for college students falsely accused of crimes, has taken real steps to protect religious freedoms and liberties promised in the First Amendment, boldly has taken on the lyme-disease-quality of a legislative mess that he inherited from Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama on immigration, and has appointed a steady line of remarkably brilliant conservative federal judges to sit on the district courts, the circuit appellate courts, and the Supreme Court.
What has Anderson Cooper achieved during that period? Jim Acosta or the editorial staffs of the New York Times and Washington Post? They have not even found the courage and strength to stand up to the coworkers and celebrities within their orbits who abuse sexually or psychologically or emotionally. They have no accomplishments to compare to his. Just their effete opinions, all echoing each other, all echoing, echoing, echoing. They gave us eight years of Nobel Peace Laureate Obama negotiating with the ISIS JV team, calming the rise of the oceans, and healing the planet.
We will take Trump negotiating with Putin any day.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
CARDI B CALLS TRUMP A NIGGER
The rapper blames Trump for police brutality against black men
I never heard of the bitch. But then I strongly dislike rap. Cardi B is known as the 'I Like It' rapper.
Here is her hateful rant on Instagram that was clear and not mumbled:
Every time I see a black man killed or mistreated by police I just keep saying ‘do nobody give a fuck, does nobody care?’
This nigger [Trump] don’t give one shit.
At least when Obama was president he released a statement letting us know he feeled [sic] it was wrong – letting us know that he cared.
I feel like police brutality is going to keep going until he’s [no longer] president.
When a kid is bad and they get away with something then they gonna keep on doing it.
That's cops. [They think] I can get away with beating a black man, killing a black man. Then why not me?
The bitch went on to urge her followers to 'get educated' on the 2020 candidates so they can be rid of Trump.
Cardi B has a history of vulgar anti-Trump rants, starting even while he was campaigning for the presidency. She is a good example of why I think rap and rappers aren’t for shit.
I never heard of the bitch. But then I strongly dislike rap. Cardi B is known as the 'I Like It' rapper.
Here is her hateful rant on Instagram that was clear and not mumbled:
Every time I see a black man killed or mistreated by police I just keep saying ‘do nobody give a fuck, does nobody care?’
This nigger [Trump] don’t give one shit.
At least when Obama was president he released a statement letting us know he feeled [sic] it was wrong – letting us know that he cared.
I feel like police brutality is going to keep going until he’s [no longer] president.
When a kid is bad and they get away with something then they gonna keep on doing it.
That's cops. [They think] I can get away with beating a black man, killing a black man. Then why not me?
The bitch went on to urge her followers to 'get educated' on the 2020 candidates so they can be rid of Trump.
Cardi B has a history of vulgar anti-Trump rants, starting even while he was campaigning for the presidency. She is a good example of why I think rap and rappers aren’t for shit.
YOU HAVE TO BE BASICALLY STUPID TO DO THIS
by Bob Walsh
Two California DMV examiners are looking at some very serious trouble for taking bribes to get unqualified people commercial driver's licenses.
Kari Scattaglia, 40, from Sylmar, was just sentenced to 2 1/2 years federal time for conspiracy to commit bribery, identity fraud (which I assume is the federal handle here) and unauthorized computer access.
She and her co-defendant, Lisa Tarraciano, 52, of North Hollywood, altered computer records to show that applicants had taken and passed tests which they in fact never took.
Scattaglia processed at least 68 fraudulent applications. Terraciano, who has yet to be sentenced, at least 148. She could be looking at five years.
That is the problem with this scheme. You CAN NOT do this without word leaking out. Then somebody will rat you out, either because they didn't get in, or they are jealous, or angry, or something. It is just plain damn dumb. Plus you could conceivably find yourself on the hook for some level of liability if one of these bozos smashes up a few people at some point and then somebody wants to find out how a completely unqualified person got a commercial license.
I worked for six years as a license examiner with DMV and was never offered a bribe. Not once. One time a guy from Jamaica offered me a tip but it was after I had already told him he passed. I politely turned him down and notified file security of the issue, just to cover my ass, in case it was a set-up of some sort. I never heard another word about it, so I assume it wasn't.
Two California DMV examiners are looking at some very serious trouble for taking bribes to get unqualified people commercial driver's licenses.
Kari Scattaglia, 40, from Sylmar, was just sentenced to 2 1/2 years federal time for conspiracy to commit bribery, identity fraud (which I assume is the federal handle here) and unauthorized computer access.
She and her co-defendant, Lisa Tarraciano, 52, of North Hollywood, altered computer records to show that applicants had taken and passed tests which they in fact never took.
Scattaglia processed at least 68 fraudulent applications. Terraciano, who has yet to be sentenced, at least 148. She could be looking at five years.
That is the problem with this scheme. You CAN NOT do this without word leaking out. Then somebody will rat you out, either because they didn't get in, or they are jealous, or angry, or something. It is just plain damn dumb. Plus you could conceivably find yourself on the hook for some level of liability if one of these bozos smashes up a few people at some point and then somebody wants to find out how a completely unqualified person got a commercial license.
I worked for six years as a license examiner with DMV and was never offered a bribe. Not once. One time a guy from Jamaica offered me a tip but it was after I had already told him he passed. I politely turned him down and notified file security of the issue, just to cover my ass, in case it was a set-up of some sort. I never heard another word about it, so I assume it wasn't.
HER STRING OF THEFTS DID NOT HELP THE OVERWORKED AND OVERBURDENED COPS
Republican candidate, 31, hoping to unseat Trump foe Ilhan Omar is charged with felony shoplifting after 'stealing 279 items from Target and $40 worth of goods from a grocery store'
Daily Mail
July 27, 2019
A Republican Congressional candidate hoping to unseat Ilhan Omar is facing felony shoplifting charges.
Danielle Stella, 31, a supporter of President Donald Trump, was arrested twice this year in the thefts of 279 items worth more than $2,300 from Target and $40 worth of goods from a grocery store in Minneapolis, The Guardian reported.
Stella reportedly described Minneapolis as 'the crime capital of our country.' She previously complained that local police were 'overworked and overburdened' and said that she would work to reduce crime if she was elected.
She told the news outlet: 'I am not guilty of these crimes. In this country I am innocent until proven guilty and that is the law.'She added: 'If I was guilty of crimes, I would never run for public office, putting myself in the public eye under a microscope to be attacked by all political sides.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: She’s innocent because the tooth fairy did it.
Daily Mail
July 27, 2019
A Republican Congressional candidate hoping to unseat Ilhan Omar is facing felony shoplifting charges.
Danielle Stella, 31, a supporter of President Donald Trump, was arrested twice this year in the thefts of 279 items worth more than $2,300 from Target and $40 worth of goods from a grocery store in Minneapolis, The Guardian reported.
Stella reportedly described Minneapolis as 'the crime capital of our country.' She previously complained that local police were 'overworked and overburdened' and said that she would work to reduce crime if she was elected.
She told the news outlet: 'I am not guilty of these crimes. In this country I am innocent until proven guilty and that is the law.'She added: 'If I was guilty of crimes, I would never run for public office, putting myself in the public eye under a microscope to be attacked by all political sides.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: She’s innocent because the tooth fairy did it.
BALTIMORE: ‘NO HUMAN BEING WOULD WANT TO LIVE THERE’
Trump calls Baltimore a 'disgusting, rat infested mess' that is 'far worse' and 'MORE dangerous' than the southern border in scathing attack on 'brutal bully' Democrat Congressman Elijah Cummings
By Keith Griffith
Daily Mail
July 27, 2019
President Donald Trump has slammed Rep. Elijah Cummings as 'a brutal bully,' saying that the congressman's Baltimore district is a 'rat and rodent infested mess.'
Trump's remarks in a series of tweets from the White House on Saturday morning referenced the House Oversight Committee Chairman's harsh remarks at an immigration hearing earlier this month.
It also follows Cummings' move to subpoena new White House records on Thursday, and a Saturday morning segment on Fox and Friends contrasting Cumming's concern for migrants at the border with conditions in his own district.
'Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA,' Trump wrote.
'As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place,' the president continued.
Trump added: 'Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States.
'No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!'
Cummings fired back in his own tweets soon after: 'Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors.'
It comes a week after Cummings exploded at Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan over conditions in facilities used to detain migrants and house unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border.
'What does that mean, when a child is sitting in their own feces, can't take a shower!' Cummings shouted at McAleenan in the July 18 hearing. 'Come on man, what's that about?'
Cummings' remarks were highlighted in a segment on Fox and Friends on Saturday morning, which Trump possibly watched from the White House.
In the segment, Kimberly Klacik, a Republican strategist from Baltimore, spoke about appalling conditions that residents in parts of the city face.
'There is a crisis at the border, but there is also a crisis in Baltimore,' Klacik said. 'Congressman Cummings represents the most dangerous district in America.'
'There's abandoned row homes filled with trash, homeless addicts, empty needles that they have used, and it's really right next door so it's attracting cockroaches, rodents, you name it,' said Klacik.
'So to have Congressman Cummings talk about conditions at the border is just laughable, because of the conditions in his own district, and a lot of people say he hasn't even been there in a while,' she continued.
Klacik had recent posted a series of videos on Twitter of a visit to West Baltimore and her conversations with residents pleading for help dealing with vacant and abandoned homes, trash and poor water service.
In one area, residents were using water siphoned from a fire hydrant after regular water service apparently went out on several blocks.
Democrats reacted with fury at Trump's remarks, calling them 'racist' and unpatriotic.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the charge, saying in a statement, 'We all reject racist attacks against [Cummings] and support his steadfast leadership.'
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a member of the House Democrat 'squad,' tweeted at Trump that that Cummings is 'centered in American values that you will *never* understand. He is a fighter for the people & a leader you will never be.'
'I am proud our campaign headquarters is in Rep. Elijah Cummings' district,' wrote Senator Kamala Harris, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. 'Baltimore has become home to my team and it's disgraceful the president has chosen to start his morning disparaging this great American city.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: Trump was only half right when he called Cumming’s District a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. He forgot to mention the other half – Baltimore is a shithole!
By Keith Griffith
Daily Mail
July 27, 2019
President Donald Trump has slammed Rep. Elijah Cummings as 'a brutal bully,' saying that the congressman's Baltimore district is a 'rat and rodent infested mess.'
Trump's remarks in a series of tweets from the White House on Saturday morning referenced the House Oversight Committee Chairman's harsh remarks at an immigration hearing earlier this month.
It also follows Cummings' move to subpoena new White House records on Thursday, and a Saturday morning segment on Fox and Friends contrasting Cumming's concern for migrants at the border with conditions in his own district.
'Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA,' Trump wrote.
'As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place,' the president continued.
Trump added: 'Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States.
'No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!'
Cummings fired back in his own tweets soon after: 'Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors.'
It comes a week after Cummings exploded at Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan over conditions in facilities used to detain migrants and house unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border.
'What does that mean, when a child is sitting in their own feces, can't take a shower!' Cummings shouted at McAleenan in the July 18 hearing. 'Come on man, what's that about?'
Cummings' remarks were highlighted in a segment on Fox and Friends on Saturday morning, which Trump possibly watched from the White House.
In the segment, Kimberly Klacik, a Republican strategist from Baltimore, spoke about appalling conditions that residents in parts of the city face.
'There is a crisis at the border, but there is also a crisis in Baltimore,' Klacik said. 'Congressman Cummings represents the most dangerous district in America.'
'There's abandoned row homes filled with trash, homeless addicts, empty needles that they have used, and it's really right next door so it's attracting cockroaches, rodents, you name it,' said Klacik.
'So to have Congressman Cummings talk about conditions at the border is just laughable, because of the conditions in his own district, and a lot of people say he hasn't even been there in a while,' she continued.
Klacik had recent posted a series of videos on Twitter of a visit to West Baltimore and her conversations with residents pleading for help dealing with vacant and abandoned homes, trash and poor water service.
In one area, residents were using water siphoned from a fire hydrant after regular water service apparently went out on several blocks.
Democrats reacted with fury at Trump's remarks, calling them 'racist' and unpatriotic.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the charge, saying in a statement, 'We all reject racist attacks against [Cummings] and support his steadfast leadership.'
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a member of the House Democrat 'squad,' tweeted at Trump that that Cummings is 'centered in American values that you will *never* understand. He is a fighter for the people & a leader you will never be.'
'I am proud our campaign headquarters is in Rep. Elijah Cummings' district,' wrote Senator Kamala Harris, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. 'Baltimore has become home to my team and it's disgraceful the president has chosen to start his morning disparaging this great American city.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: Trump was only half right when he called Cumming’s District a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. He forgot to mention the other half – Baltimore is a shithole!
TWO SAN FRANCISCO YOUTHS WILL EXPERINCE WHAT JUSTICE IS LIKE IN ITALY, BUT THEY WON’T GET OFF LIKE AMANDA ‘FOXY KNOXY’ KNOX EVENTUALLY DID
Two American tourists, aged 18 and 19, confess to killing an undercover Italian policeman, 35, who tried to recover a backpack they stole in Rome during a bungled drug deal where they were given ground aspirin instead of cocaine
Daily Mail
July 27, 2019
Two San Francisco teens on a ‘drug holiday’ in Rome have been arrested on charges of murder and attempted extortion in connection with the fatal stabbing of a police officer on Friday morning.
Lee Elder Finnegan, 19, confessed to stabbing 35-year-old paramilitary policeman Mario Cerciello Rega, along with his accomplice Gabriel Christian Natale Hjorth, 18.
The two men had been looking to buy drugs but were sold a fake batch by a dealer. Seeking revenge, the teens stole the bag of one of the dealers’ fixers and held it to ransom for 100 euros and a gram of cocaine.
But instead of meeting up with the two men to retrieve the backpack, the fixer called police. A scuffle broke out between the officers and Rega was stabbed eight times, with one blow fatally striking his heart.
Daily Mail
July 27, 2019
Two San Francisco teens on a ‘drug holiday’ in Rome have been arrested on charges of murder and attempted extortion in connection with the fatal stabbing of a police officer on Friday morning.
Lee Elder Finnegan, 19, confessed to stabbing 35-year-old paramilitary policeman Mario Cerciello Rega, along with his accomplice Gabriel Christian Natale Hjorth, 18.
The two men had been looking to buy drugs but were sold a fake batch by a dealer. Seeking revenge, the teens stole the bag of one of the dealers’ fixers and held it to ransom for 100 euros and a gram of cocaine.
But instead of meeting up with the two men to retrieve the backpack, the fixer called police. A scuffle broke out between the officers and Rega was stabbed eight times, with one blow fatally striking his heart.
NOTHING REALLY NEW WITH PA ACCUSING ISRAEL OF COMMITTING A WAR CRIME AND A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
PA to halt all agreements with Israel, including security coordination
Israel Hayom
July 26, 2019
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared Thursday that all signed agreements with Israel, including its ongoing security coordination in the West Bank, would be terminated over "all the violations against our people."
"We announce the leadership's decision to stop implementing the agreements signed with the Israeli side," he said in a speech in the West Bank city of Ramallah, saying Palestinians would immediately form a committee to study how to carry out the decision.
The two governments work together on matters ranging from water to security, and withdrawing from agreements could impact security in the West Bank.
Abbas has made similar threats before and not implemented them, but relations between the West Bank's Palestinian Authority and its Israeli counterpart have worsened in recent months.
The declaration comes a day after the US reportedly blocked a proposal in the United Nations Security Council seeking condemnation of housing demolitions carried out near east Jerusalem.
The demolition created controversy and heightened tensions between Israel and the PA.
The move led to condemnation from a number of international voices, including the European Union and France, who called on Israel to halt the demolitions.
The Palestinian government said last week that the demolitions were a breach of all agreements signed with Israel as most of the buildings are located in areas meant to be under the Palestinian Authority civilian control.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the Palestinians planned to file a complaint with the International Criminal Court over the matter.
"The cabinet condemns this grave aggression. This is a continuation of the forced displacement of the people of Jerusalem from their homes and lands – a war crime and a crime against humanity," Shtayyeh told Reuters.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan accused the Palestinians of "lies," stressing the demolition was validated by the Supreme Court after a lengthy process.
"The structures were built illegally next to the security fence and constitute a risk to the lives of the civilians and security forces," Erdan tweeted last week, citing the June Supreme Court ruling.
EDITOR’S NOTE: From Reuters:
The United States on Wednesday blocked an attempt by Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa to get the United Nations Security Council to condemn Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of Jerusalem, diplomats said.
Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa circulated a five-paragraph draft statement, seen by Reuters, to the 15-member Security Council on Tuesday that expressed grave concern and warned that the demolition “undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospect for just and lasting peace.”
Such statements have to be agreed by consensus and on Wednesday the United States told its council counterparts it could not support the text, diplomats said. A revised three paragraph draft statement was circulated, but the United States again said it did not agree with the text, diplomats said.
The United States has long accused the United Nations of anti-Israel bias and shielded its ally from council action.
Israel Hayom
July 26, 2019
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared Thursday that all signed agreements with Israel, including its ongoing security coordination in the West Bank, would be terminated over "all the violations against our people."
"We announce the leadership's decision to stop implementing the agreements signed with the Israeli side," he said in a speech in the West Bank city of Ramallah, saying Palestinians would immediately form a committee to study how to carry out the decision.
The two governments work together on matters ranging from water to security, and withdrawing from agreements could impact security in the West Bank.
Abbas has made similar threats before and not implemented them, but relations between the West Bank's Palestinian Authority and its Israeli counterpart have worsened in recent months.
The declaration comes a day after the US reportedly blocked a proposal in the United Nations Security Council seeking condemnation of housing demolitions carried out near east Jerusalem.
The demolition created controversy and heightened tensions between Israel and the PA.
The move led to condemnation from a number of international voices, including the European Union and France, who called on Israel to halt the demolitions.
The Palestinian government said last week that the demolitions were a breach of all agreements signed with Israel as most of the buildings are located in areas meant to be under the Palestinian Authority civilian control.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the Palestinians planned to file a complaint with the International Criminal Court over the matter.
"The cabinet condemns this grave aggression. This is a continuation of the forced displacement of the people of Jerusalem from their homes and lands – a war crime and a crime against humanity," Shtayyeh told Reuters.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan accused the Palestinians of "lies," stressing the demolition was validated by the Supreme Court after a lengthy process.
"The structures were built illegally next to the security fence and constitute a risk to the lives of the civilians and security forces," Erdan tweeted last week, citing the June Supreme Court ruling.
EDITOR’S NOTE: From Reuters:
The United States on Wednesday blocked an attempt by Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa to get the United Nations Security Council to condemn Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of Jerusalem, diplomats said.
Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa circulated a five-paragraph draft statement, seen by Reuters, to the 15-member Security Council on Tuesday that expressed grave concern and warned that the demolition “undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospect for just and lasting peace.”
Such statements have to be agreed by consensus and on Wednesday the United States told its council counterparts it could not support the text, diplomats said. A revised three paragraph draft statement was circulated, but the United States again said it did not agree with the text, diplomats said.
The United States has long accused the United Nations of anti-Israel bias and shielded its ally from council action.
MRS. JOHNSON’S PROWLER
By Trey Rusk
Running Code 3
July 25, 2019
Late night prowler calls are common place. They usually wind up being something like an animal in the trash or a broken gate being blown by the wind. Sometimes they might be being a Peeping Tom.
When I worked patrol in residential areas after 2am the herd thinned and you usually saw newspaper throwers, drunks and burglars. If an area had a burglary problem, I would park nearby with my lights out and windows down to listen to the night.
Mrs. Johnson lived on the extreme West Side of the city. At least once a month, on a Thursday night Mrs. Johnson would hear a prowler. Two units worked her area but only one of them always responded to the call. Officer John Jones (not his real name) was a protector of the community. He had one weakness and that was Mrs. Johnson. He was her personal protector. He would arrive at the call and she would open the garage door in her nighty so he could hide his patrol car.
Mrs. Johnson’s husband worked offshore and would be gone three weeks at a time and Mrs. Johnson would get scared at night.
One late Thursday night I was blacked out listening to an area that had been hit with rooftop burglars. It was around 3am that I heard the thumping noise. It became louder and soon I heard wood breaking. I called in my location and advised dispatch to send a backup. I was certain that someone was breaking into the roof of a local hardware store. The Sergeant arrived and called Officer Jones. We parked our cars about a block away and watched the roof. Officer Jones arrived a little late looking disheveled.
The burglar exited the same way he entered. Had he come out a door or window the alarm system would activate. He threw an axe and his loot off the back of the building and climbed down a drain pipe. We were waiting. It turns out he was a local burglar who had just returned from a stretch in prison. When he reached the ground and turned around we were standing in a semi-circle around him. All he said was "Shit!" He was arrested without incident.
The Sergeant looked at Officer Jones and said, "Jones? Where is your gun? Zip up your pants."
I transported the prisoner and booked him.
Officer Jones was moved to the East Side and given Wednesday and Thursday off. He had been off on weekends. A note was placed on the dispatcher console. It read, “Attention: Mrs. Johnson will no longer be serviced by this department.” The Sergeant
I learned long ago that the badge could get you a piece of ass, but all it took was one piece of ass to get your badge.
That's the way I see it.
Running Code 3
July 25, 2019
Late night prowler calls are common place. They usually wind up being something like an animal in the trash or a broken gate being blown by the wind. Sometimes they might be being a Peeping Tom.
When I worked patrol in residential areas after 2am the herd thinned and you usually saw newspaper throwers, drunks and burglars. If an area had a burglary problem, I would park nearby with my lights out and windows down to listen to the night.
Mrs. Johnson lived on the extreme West Side of the city. At least once a month, on a Thursday night Mrs. Johnson would hear a prowler. Two units worked her area but only one of them always responded to the call. Officer John Jones (not his real name) was a protector of the community. He had one weakness and that was Mrs. Johnson. He was her personal protector. He would arrive at the call and she would open the garage door in her nighty so he could hide his patrol car.
Mrs. Johnson’s husband worked offshore and would be gone three weeks at a time and Mrs. Johnson would get scared at night.
One late Thursday night I was blacked out listening to an area that had been hit with rooftop burglars. It was around 3am that I heard the thumping noise. It became louder and soon I heard wood breaking. I called in my location and advised dispatch to send a backup. I was certain that someone was breaking into the roof of a local hardware store. The Sergeant arrived and called Officer Jones. We parked our cars about a block away and watched the roof. Officer Jones arrived a little late looking disheveled.
The burglar exited the same way he entered. Had he come out a door or window the alarm system would activate. He threw an axe and his loot off the back of the building and climbed down a drain pipe. We were waiting. It turns out he was a local burglar who had just returned from a stretch in prison. When he reached the ground and turned around we were standing in a semi-circle around him. All he said was "Shit!" He was arrested without incident.
The Sergeant looked at Officer Jones and said, "Jones? Where is your gun? Zip up your pants."
I transported the prisoner and booked him.
Officer Jones was moved to the East Side and given Wednesday and Thursday off. He had been off on weekends. A note was placed on the dispatcher console. It read, “Attention: Mrs. Johnson will no longer be serviced by this department.” The Sergeant
I learned long ago that the badge could get you a piece of ass, but all it took was one piece of ass to get your badge.
That's the way I see it.
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