President Donald Trump stated: “It’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country. But other than that, I wish everybody a very Merry Christmas.” | Zach Gibson/Getty Images
By DAVID COHEN
President Donald Trump used a Christmas morning gathering in the Oval Office to reiterate the reasons he insists funding is needed for a border wall, even if it means the federal government will continue to be partially shut down.
“I can’t tell you when the government is going to reopen,“ Trump said, according to pool reports.
Not until, he explained, “we have a wall, a fence, whatever they’d like to call it. I’ll call it whatever they want. But it’s all the same thing. It’s a barrier from people pouring into our country.”
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The president said he thought that even those federal workers who were losing their paychecks would be supportive of his efforts.
“I think they understand what’s happening,“ he said. “They want border security. The people of this country want border security. It’s not a question of me. I’d rather not be doing shutdowns.”
I can assure President Trump DON civilians, myself included, would rather not be doing shutdowns, either. Non-essential employees will be furloughed and go home without pay; the lucky exempt folks, including myself, will go in tomorrow and work without pay. Since this isn’t a sequester, there’s a reasonable belief that lost pay will be reinstated. Pretty good deal for the furloughed, who get an unexpected paid vacation, even if the pay is belated. What really chaffs my ass is this is for only $5B USD, which is essentially a rounding error in the US budget. Money isn’t the issue of course, or even The Wall. It’s brinkmanship between Trump and Schumer with us caught in the middle. Again.
Lars, before you jump in with both feet loudly declaring how Trump sucks, take a calming breath and try for that rational sweet spot you hit yesterday, and recognize that both sides pretty much suck here. Thanks.
The rest of the article may be viewed at: The Politico
Federal workers woke up to to a partial government shutdown Saturday that could last through Christmas or even the New Year, according to multiple congressional sources, despite the appearance of progress towards a deal late Friday.
The gloomy outlook comes as one-quarter of the government entered shutdown mode at midnight, including nine Cabinet departments, several major agencies and roughly 800,000 federal workers who are impacted by the lapse in funding.
Trump canceled plans to fly to his Mar-A-Lago resort Saturday, with it unclear if or when the president will join his family in Florida for the holidays. But the Capitol was largely quiet, with no meetings among House and Senate leaders scheduled and most lawmakers gone.
“I don’t think we see anything major happening until after Christmas,” said one senior Republican aide. “Maybe on the 26th or 27th, we start seeing movement again.”
The onus, congressional aides in both parties said, is on the Senate to find a way forward. Republicans in the upper chamber need nine Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold to re-open the government, so Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — in tandem with Trump — would have to make some sort of deal.
Unless McConnell goes for the Nuclear Option, and passes the bill with a simple majority. That will be a tough sell among the Republican Senators, though, as several have stated they would vote against the rules change needed to invoke the option. If it did pass, it certainly would be used by the Dems when they get the upper hand some time in the future.
As I went out and about today, I noticed pretty heavy traffic for a weekend, and the parking lots were full at the retail stores- Christmas shopping no doubt. The traffic lights worked as usual, there were no uniforms in sight, and every one was pretty civil and considerate. Government shutdown? No sign that I saw.
Remember the Fort Riley Soldier that drove all the way to Baxter Country, Arkansas, to meet up with a 16-year-old? Mitchell O’Brien intended to meet a teen in a parking lot by a business. He did his “recon”, driving around twice and checking that the place was “secure”, then did another check on foot, before going to the “rendezvous point”.
When he got there, he met with a deputy instead of his intended fling. He also met his new destiny, both in the near and far term. We talked about the ramifications he faced for that antic.
Well, on top of the ramifications related to his Army career, as well as to how his family will view him, he has car repair costs to add to the mix.
Another person, who had his car impounded, used Mitchell O’Brien’s car as a battering ram in order knock the lot door open. Then, he drove his own car out of the impound lot.
From KTLO:
A Boone County man, Robert Lambert of Lead Hill, played a part in making O’Brien’s visit to the Twin Lakes Area even worse. Lambert was arrested Dec. 14th by Mountain Home Police at Walmart and placed in the Baxter County Detention Center. The vehicle he was driving was impounded.
When he was released Sunday, Lambert went to the impound lot to find his vehicle, but discovered the lot was closed and secured. Lambert was captured on video surveillance cameras as he crawled under the fence and gained access to another vehicle and proceeded to ram the gate open. He then went to his own vehicle and drove it off the lot.
The vehicle he used as a battering ram belonged to O’Brien, who had driven it from Kansas to Mountain Home to allegedly meet the underage female with whom he had been corresponding on social media.
It was estimated Lambert caused about $10,000 damage to O’Brien’s vehicle and property at the impound lot.
You can read more here, as well as in the previous article.
An active duty Soldier exchanged messages with a 16-year-old. Included among the messages was a request for sexually explicit photos. He made plans to meet her, then carried those plans out. However, when he got to the location he was expecting to meet her at, he met a deputy instead.
From Baxter County Sheriff:
A Sheriff’s Deputy set up surveillance at the location. At approximately 12:47 AM, he observed a vehicle drive past the area twice, then pull in and park. After parking, the man sent a text message to the girl stating he was close by. The man then walked from his car along Highway 5 South past the girl’s house, then to the meeting location. The man went behind the building. The deputy then approached and made contact with the man, who was identified as 31 year old ANDREW MITCHELL O’BRIEN of Junction City, Kansas. After a brief exchange, ANDREW O’BRIEN was arrested and taken into custody. His vehicle was then searched. Deputies found handcuffs, vodka, condoms in the vehicle, as well as two cell phones believed to have been used in commission of the crimes.All of these were seized and taken into evidence.
If this guy is infantry, and given his rank, he may have been a squad leader. He’s not junior enlisted. He also may have more than 10 years in the military. Fort Riley’s Military Police has a detainer on him.
He’s going to show up in circuit court on December 20, 2018. If the Judge releases him, it won’t be long before the MP’s talk to him. His future isn’t looking bright. This won’t be a Christmas season that Andrew O’Brien will want to remember.
“The Anne Arundel County police chief defended Maryland’s new “red flag” protective law Monday, just hours after a 61-year-old man was shot and killed while officers were trying to serve a court order requiring him to surrender his guns.
Chief Timothy Altomare said the fatal shooting in Ferndale was a sign that the law, which went into effect Oct. 1, is needed. There have been 19 protective orders sought in the county since then, tying Harford County for the most in Maryland, according to a report on the first month. Statewide, about half of the 114 orders sought have been granted.
“If you look at this morning’s outcome, it’s tough for us to say ‘Well, what did we prevent?’ ” he said. “Because we don’t know what we prevented or could’ve prevented. What would’ve happened if we didn’t go there at 5 a.m.?”
Altomare said the two investigating officers, who he did not identify Monday, “did the best they could with the situation they had.” One of them fatally shot Gary J. Willis at his Linwood Avenue home. – Article.
According to the article, Mr. Willis did put the gun down on the floor. If so then, why was it necessary to shoot him, and why did those cops go there at 5AM and wake him up? Per the article, Linwood became agitated and picked up the gun and a struggle ensued. So why was it necessary for either cop to pull out a gun and shoot him, instead of calling for back up and putting him on the floor? Is Anne Arundel County turning into Chicago?
And who called the cops on him, anyway? Was it family or a disgruntled neighbor? Apparently, it was a family member, but why aren’t these people responsible enough to get him to counseling if he’s agitated about something?
Regarding this incident in Marylnad, which is now a “red flag law” state, there are many questions left unanswered. I’m hoping they will be answered, because this is bizarre, from my point of view.
As you may or may not know, red flag laws allow someone to make a call to the police and say you’re some kind of threat, even if you are not. If this by itself does not smack of Stalin’s era, then what is it? Someone likened it to “Minority Report”, a “gag me with a spoon” movie with that midget actor TCruise. (N.B: if Scientology has so much influence, why isn’t he more famous and more taller?)
There are states that already have those laws in place. I think in Florida, there is also the Baker Act. Here’s the list:
In Illinois, jumping through all those hoops to comply with state legislation has been tested several times now. As you may recall, the Mayor of Deerfield, IL, was slapped by the court for violating the “unlawful search and seizure”, “due process” and all those other cautionary measures, in addition to violating the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. That sparked the Sanctuary County movement which is ongoing and becoming wider spread in the state of Illinois. (Hey, how about some Sanctuary States?)
I’d like to point out the obvious here. In the Florida Parkland school shooting, there were calls reporting the shooter and the police did absolutely nothing. He didn’t have a “collection”, which is something that is kept in order and looked after. He just had a big pile of guns. He did make threats because he didn’t fit in at school and was bullied. The school did nothing about it. The people he lived with did nothing about him. And, finally, the police did nothing about his threats, even with the backup of the Baker Act, so there was nothing that stopped him from his rampage.
We must remember, too, that nothing stops cops from being jackasses either, which has a lot to do with what happened to Mr. Linwood. The Chicago cop who shot LaQuan MacDonald shot him in the back 16 times, instead of in the leg to disable him. The Chicago cop who beat up a female bartender half his size because she wouldn’t serve him any more liquor is another example. When the police do these things, they make the rest of us doubt their sanity.
And remember: we were subjected to Piglet and His Friend Pooh in Parkland, making their grandstanding appearances during their attention-whoring day or two.
So when someone goes in to a panic attack over “red flag laws”, my response would be that he file a public complaint that a law like that does not comply with the US Constitution, does not allow due process or follow that part about ‘unreasonable search and seizure’. You have to sometimes stand up for your rights if you want to keep them.
That it is Nazism and Stalinist KGB/NKVD stuff at its worst, that it specifically follows those practices that led to concentration camps and gulags – those are all true, but has any of that come to pass? Use whatever legalities you can come up with, but keep it calm and assertive. Go through the courts and get that crap overturned. At my age, if I’m not allowed to have a gun on me when I’m on the trails with a camera, in the odd but possible event that I may or might run into a rabid coyote (they never get their shots), I want to know why.
You can file a complaint pro per or get the help of law students, and all of them need a shake-up now and then to rattle their complacency. They also need the real-world experience of dealing with something that they may not agree with, but which is still legally and constitutionally valid and/or invalid, and they are required to do some real legal work in some states. Good practice for them.
Seriously, if someone really wants to be Gestapo, shouldn’t they at least wear the armbands and the insignia so we know who they are?
Unless we take the old bullshit by the horns, the bullshit can and will bury us deep. We must always pay attention to our AO.
The Bad Guys are out there in the darkness…. And they want Your Guns. (Snerrkkkk!)
When someone from Generation X, or the older generations, talks about getting paddled when they were younger, it’s usually by someone that was older. If we committed a serious enough action that dictated a butt whoppen, we increased the chances for a butt beating.
Well, a 45-year-old man exercised such error in judgment, and ended up getting paddled in the rear by members of a younger generation.
I was in a social fraternity during my first attempt at collage, going through the pledge phase, then initiation into the fraternity. No paddles were involved, but we had a wading pool outside the fraternity house that we constantly got tossed into… Regardless of what part of the year it was.
Although fraternity life was fun when I did it, I wouldn’t do it now, at my age… I’m older than the guy featured in this article.
Of course, at 45, he should’ve known better even if he never had fraternity experience. He has a couple of teenage sons, and he had to remember his mindset when he was a teenager, and when he was a young adult.
He was doing the equivalent of being a senior NCO that decides to “go native with the privates”.
From the New York Post:
A middle-aged Brooklyn man told cops he paid a painful price for pledging a fraternity at the ripe old age of 45 — by getting whacked on the backside hundreds of times with a wooden paddle, police sources said Friday.
Well, let’s see. He decided that he wanted to join a fraternity. He goes through the process, and ends up with young whipper snappers whacking his backsides with a paddle. The bruising was serious enough that he went to the hospital to get treatment. Then, this led to him talking to the police.
Didn’t he see Animal House?
That’s when they went more medieval than Greek on his heinie, whacking it up to 200 times with the paddle and their open hands, according to the sources.
Well, in certain sectors of society, “going Greek” means a back-door entry via the pooper. So, this guy would’ve been f’ed either way.
On a side note, Pew Research has decided they will use 1996 as the last year that Millennials were born. This means that the youngest millennial will turn 22 before the ball drops this coming New Year’s Day.
So, chances are that there were those among the paddlers who are members of Generation Z.
Because of the nature of what happened, I’m entertaining the possibility that this could be satire. if not, we’re familiar with “Teh Stoopid”.
For a long time after the end of the war in Vietnam, the Communist Vietnamese government had a law in place that any US citizen who entered Vietnam would immediately be arrested.
In 1999, things changed when the British government returned ownership of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong to the mainland Chinese government. There was speculation that the city would become another Communist wasteland. Instead, the Chinese government had been watching how things worked in Hong Kong and in the business world outside of China and took the track of business. Instead of interfering with a successful economic model, they embraced it and began a new way of doing things. Construction of new buildings in Beijing and the irruption of the capitalist business model made many, many people prosperous. And China wanted money coming in. China’s plentiful coal resources spurred the construction of new coal-fired power generating stations, and began to provide power to provinces that had not had a reliable source before. China is now contracting to build coal-fired power plants in other countries.
With Vietnam being heavily influenced by the Chinese government, the capitalist business model was adopted and tourism grew. Americans can visit there, but do not speak out against the government unless you want to spend time in a re-education camp.
Ho Chi Minh started the French-Indochina war over the French presence in Indochina before World War II. He wanted money and the French colonials out of Indochina, period. His war with France began in 1946 just as Kim Il-Sung, the godlike grandfather of ND:tBF, started his own war in Korea in his attempt to unite the north and south of that peninsula. Grandpa Kim wanted power more than money.
Both Uncle Ho and Grandpa Kim got help from the Chinese in their quest. There were Chinese weapons and troops in both Korea and Indochina. When the French capitulated, Ho demanded a ransom for the 10,000 French POWs, but returned only 3,900 to the French. Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel, and Laos and Cambodia became independent states.. MacArthur, in Korea, stubbornly refused to end his trek into the north, demanded a nuclear weapon drop on the north, and was refused and recalled to the US by Pres. Truman. Saigon became the capital of South Vietnam, and Hanoi the capital of North Vietnam, and the Korean peninsula was permanently divided.
In the 1960s, the US sent advisers to South Vietnam. South Korea was still recovering from its own war, with a US base at the DMZ that marked the boundary between the north and south. Occasionally, people would slip through the cracks, into the South or across the Nork-Chinese border into China. Pres. Johnson decided that the US should get more heavily involved in Vietnam and sent in more troops to start a shooting war in 1965.
In 1987, two years before the USSR was dissolved and the war in the Balkans got underway, Donald Trump began to make trips to the Soviet Union for the purpose of making real estate deals. In 2013, the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow while Trump was there, negotiating a real estate deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. That deal fell through and he returned to the USA. Robert Mueller was Director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013.
In 1989, after 10 years of futile warfare in Afghanistan, Gorbachev declared the Soviet Union bankrupt, dismissed the Politburo and sent everybody home. Shortly afterwards, the Berlin Wall was pulled down and the Balkan Wars began.
During this time, with Trump engaging in his business deals and going wherever he felt like going, the CIA paid the Chinese through a third party to make it appear that the Russians were interfering in the US elections. The third party go-between for this was a woman whose presence was so lowkey as to be almost nonexistent. She went by several names, including the Dragon Lady and Mah Jongg. She appears in a few photos, but very, very few. Her appearance is not completely Chinese, but seems to be something else. There has been speculation that she is part Chinese and part “other” such as Yakut or Vietnamese.
She was known for her ability to pick up languages quickly with the correct accent, especially important when speaking various Chinese dialects such as Mandarin or Yue or Hakka. If your accent is incorrect, no one will understand what you say. This made her a valuable asset for mischief.
She also seems to have been an expert code hacker. In 2016, hackers stole $100 million from the central bank of Bangladesh after obtaining payment-transfer codes and moving the money overseas in what information security experts say appears to be one of the largest bank heists in history. Anyone who can use these codes can also make transitions quickly and instantly once they are confirmed. But the bank reportedly managed to block a further transfer of $870 million initiated by the hacker group.
The destination for this large sum of stolen money was never identified. The speculation was that the Dragon Lady sent it to North Korea, but attempts to trace it failed. Any account that received that money in the beginning was gone, period, with funds immediately transferred to other accounts to hide them. However, Mah Jongg did leave a mark behind, almost as a tease: $1.00 was left in the Bangladesh account.
Only part of the blackmail money that Obama sent to Iran was delivered there. Some of it was diverted to North Korea, and from there to China for the purpose of enhancing the deceit that Russia was involved in meddling in the affairs of other countries, especially the US elections. Remember that recent whine from the Ayatollahs that they were running out of money?
The discovery of Maria Butina’s inept and silly efforts to meddle in things, after she came to the USA in 2016, was also a distraction meant to enhance the notion that Russia was interfering in US politics. She was what Stalin used to call a “useful idiot” – the perfect plant to distract attention from what was really going on.
In addition, the Chinese persuaded Fatty Kim da T’ird and his Nork bombmakers to create a distraction with his 25 kiloton test in September 2016, near the time of US election debates. He’s had plenty of assistance from China in return for distracting outsiders like the US government from their activities. The second test, the half-megaton underground test in September 2017, was a secondary distraction meant to draw attention away from the Chinese and put it on the Russians even though Trump was long since sworn in.
All those missile tests going on in Norkiland, and the posturing and threats by Fatty Kim da T’ird, were distractions right up until the ballots were counted and recounted with more Trump votes being found, and the electoral college had cast its votes. The activities from North Korea abruptly ceased when Trump, in November 2017, got the two Koreas to work together, made business deals with Xi JinPing in China, visited Vietnam, and has watched while every ridiculous effort possible has been dragged into existence to try to unseat him, including the Circus of Trolls called Supreme Court justice hearings.
The effort is still going on. And China is now negotiating for contracts to build coal-fired power plants in countries outside their borders, while now openly demanding that the USA give them more cash.
I suppose it was just a matter of time. What with all the ‘include diversity’ BS, the Boy Scouts became the Boy and Girl Scouts for no apparent good reason, except the Girl Scouts seems to have become a training ground for young feminists with cookies. The final straw was I think, being so inclusive the courts decided LGBT Scoutmasters were just peachy. It just got to be too much.
The Boy Scouts of America are considering filing for bankruptcy, according to a report released Wednesday.
The Wall Street Journal states leadership of the youth organization, mired in sexual misconduct litigation, hired the law firm Sidley Austin LLP to explore a wide range of options, including petitioning for relief under Chapter 11.
On Wednesday, Boy Scouts CEO Michael B. Surbaugh released a statement in response to the Journal‘s report, saying, “We are working with experts to explore all options available to ensure that the local and national programming of the Boy Scout of America continues uninterrupted.”
The Boys Scouts of America has undertaken rebranding efforts this year, announcing in May that the nonprofit would rename itself “Scouts BSA” in 2019. In May, the Boys Scouts of America announced girls will be allowed to join the group next year. “We wanted to land on something that evokes the past but also conveys the inclusive nature of the program going forward,” Surbaugh said at the time of the announcement. “We’re trying to find the right way to say we’re here for both young men and young women.”
Another staple of America has crashed on the reef of Political Correctness, and will never be the same. The rest of this sad saga may be viewed here at: Breitbart News
President Donald Trump stated: “It’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country. But other than that, I wish everybody a very Merry Christmas.” | Zach Gibson/Getty Images
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