February 19, 2020

Republicans in Oregon, California want to secede and become part of Idaho

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Republicans-Oregon-California-become-Greater-Idaho-15065765.php



Frustrated with Oregon's liberal government, a conservative group wants to transfer Oregon's rural areas to Idaho, according to the Washington Post. While Oregon leans Democratic, Idaho is a historically red state.

The group, called Move Oregon's Border for a Greater Idaho, is asking 18 Oregon counties to approve their petitions to open communications with state legislature. If approved, the group would then have to collect signatures of about 6 percent of the counties' populations to see the referendum show up on their ballots. After that, both Oregon's and Idaho's state legislatures as well as Congress would have to approve the changing of borders.

February 18, 2020

even rightwing washingtonexaminer op-ed calls Trump pardon "swampy"

By commuting the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, President Trump has boosted one of the mosquitolike corrupt officials who suck the blood out of democracy.


-----------

To be clear, Trump's action doesn't simply fuel the swamp. It floods it with gallons of festering water and a banqueting invitation to the mosquito corruption clique.

The president doesn't seem to get this.

Explaining his decision, Trump said that he didn't know Blagojevich all that well. But, the president noted affectionately, "He was on, for a short while, The Apprentice years ago." The silliness continued. "Many people disagree with his sentence," Trump insisted, without naming any, although a separate White House statement did list a small number of media personalities and a war criminal as supporting the commutation.

It got even sillier.

In an inadvertent effort to improve the public standing of his perceived enemies, Trump attacked former federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald for leading the prosecution. "It was a prosecution by the same people [as those who led the Russia investigation into the Trump campaign]: Comey, Fitzpatrick." Trump's not-so-helpful-to-himself implication? That he and Blagojevich are victims of the same conspiracy, though it bears noting here that Comey was not actually FBI director during the time of the prosecution.

But the saddest element of Trump's decision is his total disregard for why Blagojevich deserved what he got. Lamenting the former governor's "ridiculous sentence," Trump shows that he doesn't think that public corruption is that big a deal.


So much for draining the swamp.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trumps-very-swampy-commutation-of-rod-blagojevichs-sentence

February 17, 2020

Trump voting couple find out husband is undocumented

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/694/get-back-to-where-you-once-belonged

Act II
Nowhere Man
ByJeremy Raff
Raul felt like he had found his spot in the world: a job he was good at, a group of people he liked and admired. And then he got kicked out. Kicked out in this way he didn’t even know was possible. Reporter Jeremy Raff explains. (28 minutes)

===========================

Summary of the 28 minute audio: Raul and his wife work as Border and Custom agents in Texas. Raul's birth certificate says he was born in brownsville Texas. He thought he was an American citizen his entire life. When he applied for a green card for his brother, the govt did a deeper look and found a Mexican birth certificate. The parents had the phony birth certificate created to give him a better life.

Now Raul is living undocumented in Texas, not venturing out from his home because of border check points everywhere. at one point in the story, the teary voiced wife mentions thinking "lets ask Trump for help, we voted for him". No... she never mentions the irony. I wish the host would have followed up on that "we voted Trump" comment.

Raul's undocumented status has devastated their lives. Despite a lifetime in america that includes military service, Raul's green card application was denied. Raul's son from prior marriage is no undocumented as his green card was based on his fathers. Raul is unemployed and his border patrol buddies keep their distance.

February 16, 2020

TV contestant gets verbal spanking for saying the 1950s were a great time

at 53:00 he makes his statement about the 50s being great and woman of color replies: the guy is the same one who designed Billie Porter's dress tuxedo. surprising he is so clueless!

February 16, 2020

Lousiana's anti immigrant atty General in business with shady labor importer

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_00a569d8-4f64-11ea-992d-372e997b3103.html

As Louisiana’s top prosecutor, Attorney General Jeff Landry ought to be able to sniff out a criminal from across the room.

As an elected official, Landry ought to find his $110,000-a-year job sufficiently lucrative and challenging that he doesn’t need a side gig.

As an attorney, Landry ought to know whether a construction business is supposed to register with the Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors.

Friday’s deeply reported story by Bryn Stole and John Simerman suggests that Landry has failed those tests.

Landry and his brother Benjamin went into business in 2017 with a Houston labor broker named Marco Pesquera, who was being investigated at the time and later admitted he helped his clients defraud the immigration system to import more than 1,000 Mexican skilled laborers to the Gulf South. Landry and Pesquera set out to make millions by winning federal visas to bring in Mexican workers to help build a natural gas export plant in Cameron Parish.


Landry is not charged in the visa scheme, and there is no evidence he knew the feds had their eyes on Pesquera. The federal visa program is designed to overcome temporary labor shortages, and the visas Landry’s business secured were legal, if they were obtained truthfully.

February 16, 2020

bloomberg ad savages trump

https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1228755924115955712

February 16, 2020

someone forgot to turn off the loudspeaker used to inform residents about the latest on coronavirus

omg

https://twitter.com/Daniel12705565/status/1228845089805475840

February 16, 2020

A taxi driver saved an elderly woman from being scammed out of $25,000

A California cab driver knew something sounded fishy when his elderly passenger said she needed a ride to the bank to withdraw $25,000.

Rajbir Singh picked up a 92-year-old woman in Roseville, California, two weeks ago. When he started chatting with her, Singh said she told him she was about to withdraw the money to settle a debt with the IRS.

He pleaded with the woman to reconsider, saying he thought this could be a scam. Singh even detoured to a police station to help convince his passenger not to withdraw her money.

"I am an honest guy, and these are old people. They need help," Singh, the owner of Roseville Cab, told CNN on Thursday. "It just made sense."

As Singh talked to the woman, she told him that someone had called her and asked for the money. When he asked if it was a family member, the woman grew silent.

Singh said the woman agreed to let him call the number to the person who was posing as an IRS employee.

"We called this number again and I asked the man, 'Do you know this lady?' He said no," Singh said. "I knew something was wrong."
When Singh pressed the man, saying the woman was 92 years old and she was nervous, the man hung up on him. After repeated calls back, Singh said the number blocked them.

Despite that, Singh said the woman still didn't believe him, so he came up with another idea.

"Raj pleaded with the woman to reconsider so they agreed to stop by the Roseville Police Station to ask an officer," the police department said in a post on Facebook.

Singh spoke with an officer in the station, who then spoke with the woman, police said.
The conversation with the officer worked, and the woman believed she was being scammed.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/16/us/taxi-driver-prevents-scam-trnd/index.html

February 16, 2020

6 year old girl on her way to 48 hour hold in mental facility and sedation.

Body camera footage released by Florida authorities show a 6-year-old girl calmly interacting with police officers in the moments before she is involuntarily placed in a mental health facility.

Martina Falk on Thursday demanded more information from Duval Public Schools after staff had her daughter, Nadia, committed for throwing a tantrum in her classroom at Love Grove Elementary School.

“I got a call saying that she is so uncontrollable they had to Baker Act her. They called me and they said ‘Ms. Falk we’re calling to let you know that there’s nothing we could do,’” she told News 4.

“There’s nothing else you could do for my 6-year-old? When she was taken to that hospital and locked away in a seclusion room? They said they did attempt to calm her down.”

According to the incident report, an officer responded to the school around 10:30 a.m. and was told Nadia, who was diagnosed with ADHD in 2017, was a “threat to herself and others.” She was sedated and released from the River Point Behavioral Health Facility after a mandatory 48-hour hold on Feb. 4.

Footage from responding officers’ body cam released on Thursday show the young girl walking out of the school, hand in hand with a Jacksonville the sheriff’s deputies.



The female officer can be heard telling Nadia that she was not going to jail and the young girl expresses excitement over getting to ride in the police cruise

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-committed-florida-girl-calmaly-walking-mental-health-facility-20200214-r3ig4dl56rem3mfxhavno2kkyq-story.html

February 15, 2020

So, you hate socialism, ya say?

https://twitter.com/SergioJSiano/status/1228474445150539779


Sergio Siano
@SergioJSiano
So, you hate socialism, ya say?

If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies.

If the $36 upsets you more than the $4,000, then you just hate poor people - not socialism.
4:21 PM · Feb 14, 2020·Twitter for iPhone