The collective media – mainstream, social, and fake – are all over this pizza guy arrest at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn by ICE. Every open borders rallying cry since 1986 is being trod out by any progressive, liberal, and democratic politician that can find a podium, to vilify ICE and laud illegals with a stunning distortion of language and facts. The politicians so want this to be a case of racial profiling by capricious guards instead of competent security on a federal installation that they would almost prefer to err on the side of slaughter.
The news accounts available on line are so disjointed and poorly annotated as to be worthless in determining what we know, let alone what we don’t know. The most coherent of them that I’ve seen is an AP report cited here:

http://www.wtnh.com/news/regional-news/military-base-calls-immigration-agents-on-pizza-delivery-man/1224242195

In time, more facts will come to light and more factoids dismissed, but there is an unforgiveable omission in all of these initial reports that is so dispiriting as to make one ponder permanent withdrawal to the wilderness.

The thwarted attack on Fort Dix, NJ in 2007 was to be perpetrated by (you guessed it) undocumented immigrants, that is, men who entered the country illegally via Mexico. Much as pizza man Pablo Villavicencio illegally entered the country from (you guessed it) Mexico in 2010. In a touch of coincidental irony worthy of O. Henry, one of the convicted Fort Dix plotters knew the layout of Fort Dix from (you guessed it) delivering pizzas there.

Now, had this Fort Hamilton security guard waved Villavicencio through (as other guards had reportedly done on past deliveries), and Pablo subsequently shot up the place, we’d all be sending thoughts and prayers, drawing parallels to Fort Dix, and be wondering why-oh-why couldn’t we see this coming? We’d be castigating the intelligence community, the failure of base security, and the NRA, just because.

I hope these hive-dwelling second-guessers that are spouting how ICE is in the wrong and the undocumented immigrant, who is purported to actually be documented by virtue of his municipality-issued NYC ID card, has been unconscionably mistreated and his family victimized.

In what will one day morph into a verifiable narrative of the event, but is far from that as of this writing, we are being told Pablo is married to an American citizen. Sandra Chico emigrated from Columbia and says she’s a citizen, so it is reported as fact. She says Pablo has applied for his permanent green card as the spouse of a citizen, but the paperwork hasn’t been completed. Well then, that would still make him not a citizen. That would still make him undocumented, NYC ID card notwithstanding. It would still make his being here illegal.

We are told politicians are very concerned why he was detained and why his immigration status was questioned, and why a background check was conducted. It is reported that he was detained because there was an ICE detention-hold issued in 2010 after Pablo failed to appear for his immigration hearing. We shall see. We are told his immigration status was questioned because he could not produce a driver’s license (imagine that? a deliveryman) and stated he had previously been admitted off his DeBlasio card. This guard thought otherwise and eventually Pablo’s immigration status became known. Whether he was asked, whether it was allowed to ask, whether he volunteered it, whether they beat it out of him and stole his pizza, I’m sure we’ll find out in some fashion. It is further reported that Pablo signed some sort of document agreeing to a background check as a condition for entering the base. Through the background check, the detention order from 2010 was learned. Whether he was tricked into signing the waiver, whether he didn’t connect the dots as to what the background check might reveal, whether he failed to comprehend that stepping on to federal property, an army base no less, entails what one might call enhanced identification protocols, maybe put in place following the Fort Dix plot, is all conjecture at this point.

One thing that is certain, there is a sign at the gate advising all persons they are about to enter a restricted area and all persons and vehicles are subject to search. It’s quite possible your sanctuary city-issued NYC ID card may not cut it. Imagine trying to gain entry on to a military base in Mexico or Ecuador without credentials, while in the country illegally and skipping out on a court date.

But this penchant for political exploitation to paint a narrative of a poorly done-to Ecuadorian, who came here in search of the American Dream, married a naturalized citizen from Columbia, fathered two daughters, and is a devoted family man waiting for his green card to legalize his status.

As opposed to, here we have a guy who snuck into the country, was apprehended and released having given his word to appear before an immigration judge to make his case that he be allowed to stay, and just blew it off. Whether he married this Sandra and fathered her children and applied for a green card is a big “who knows” at this point. What they want you to believe is that Pablo is a victim of racism, a victim of Trump-induced bigotry, a victim of an overzealous military, and a victim of home-wrecking ICE policy. His wife and children are also victims. The pizza parlor owner is a victim.

May I respectfully point out that the Fort Dix plot was averted solely by FBI infiltration; every other safeguard – border security, customs & immigration enforcement, gun control, and access to the base – were all compromised to some degree. The system did not work (a regular occurrence) and disaster was only prevented through good federal police work.
But in the Fort Hamilton case, where you have a vigilant guard on the gate who dared challenge someone seeking access without credentials – again, directly resulting from the continued failure to protect the border and enforce immigration law – the media and the opportunistic politicians put the bull’s eye on the one agency tasked with cleaning up our dishonest immigration policy. I hope ICE and base security is vindicated, and I’m not rooting for a cache of weapons to be found in Pablo’s trunk, but it would be nice if we were all to reflect on what has gone wrong in the past, and God forbid, be proactive in preventing it in the future.

Maybe when those gas bag politicians and op ed nitwits are through with their next solemn post-disaster critique that ends with “….so this never happens again”, maybe this is what it takes to get there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Fort_Dix_attack_plot

• The Duka family entered the United States illegally through Mexico in October 1984. In 1989, the father Ferik Duka applied for asylum with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and acknowledged the family’s illegal entry into the country.[8]
• November 28, 2006 – Serdar Tatar, who had delivered pizza to Fort Dix before, obtains a map of the Fort Dix military installation through his employer’s pizza delivery restaurant, which serves the military base.[39]

• The men tried unsuccessfully to purchase weapons from an FBI informant, including AK-47s, M16s, semi-automatic SIG Sauer 9 mm handguns, and a Smith & Wesson 9 mm. The informant stated that the weapons were to come from an underground military dealer from Baltimore, Maryland, who had recently returned from Egypt
• According to news reports, five of the men arrested intended to attack the Fort Dix military base and kill as many servicemen as they could.[2] In a conversation that was recorded by the informant, Shnewer told the FBI informant “My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers. You hit four, five or six Humvees and light the whole place [up] and retreat completely without any losses”.
• The Duka brothers are currently being held at the Federal Detention Center, Philadelphia pending an appeals hearing.
• Mohamad Shnewer is serving his life sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute, a medium-security facility in Indiana.[35]
• Serdar Tatar is serving his 33-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Memphis, a medium-security facility in Tennessee, and is scheduled for release in 2036.
• Agron Abdullahu was released on March 24, 2009.

But, no. Let’s just step aside and let the pizza guy in. What’s the worst that can happen?

Seeing excerpts of the James Comey interview in advance of his book release on ABC’s 20/20 program drives home the astonishing dichotomy of the Hobson’s Choice the American electorate was handed on November 8, 2016. That is, choose between two despicable candidates, both of whom are sullied by the specter of investigation, and somehow, fifteen months down the road, not be lamenting aloud that we have a despicable president!

James Comey’s well-articulated but wholly subjective, one might say self-serving, criticisms of Donald Trump are unequivocally embraced in many quarters of the populace. And for good reason. Yet I cannot point to a single fault that Comey lays out which is not embodied, in some cases to an even greater degree, by Hillary Clinton.

The takeaway headline in Comey’s interview, that Trump is “morally unfit to be president” suggests that the voters somehow turned their collective backs on a candidate that was morally fit. Hillary Clinton no more demonstrates her moral compass is in any way superior to that of the current president than she can resist putting any interests above her own. Both she and Trump are unquestionably deeply flawed in the character department, yet we bemoan that our president is not a pillar of morality. How could it be otherwise? That was a given on November 9th regardless of the outcome. It’s what Donald Rumsfeld would call a “known known”

Comey goes on to cite Trump’s insensitive commentary on Charlottesville, his shameful treatment of women, and his serial prevarication in matters in big and small as evidence that Trump is not fit to serve. Equally insensitive, was Hillary’s embrace of BLM and lending it moral equivalence to the civil rights movement. Equally egregious, was Hillary’s vile treatment of the women who bravely stood to accuse her husband of sexual assault. And as for lying in matters large and small, Hillary’s aversion to the truth runs the gamut from fleeing sniper fire in Bosnia to the Benghazi cover up to her painfully reconstructed excuses for her email server travails. Bottom line: exactly how were we supposed to emerge on November 9th without a president who was “unfit” in Comey’s mind?

Trump’s presidency is besieged with contentious litigation on multiple fronts, unrelenting congressional inquiry, legislative inertia from deeply polarized lawmakers, and media acrimony on a biblical scale. Most people find the whole spectacle exhausting, worrisome, and debilitating for our nation. Had Hillary won the election, can anyone imagine it would be any different? Regardless of the victor, November 9th was harvest time for the fruits of the poisonous tree.

So with all the critics, all the hand-wringing about how awful it is to have a person like this in the White House, what other scenario was possible? Our time would be better spent looking at the process that yielded these two (dare I say?) deplorable candidates. Why were sober, accomplished, ethically superior candidates tossed aside in the run up to 2016? With each party’s standard bearer setting the bar this low, surely there was someone around whom the nation could rally and spare us from choosing between two craven people.

Granted, neither party produced a charismatic visionary that captivated the nation, although Bernie Sanders genuinely connected with much of the electorate. But he was after all a socialist, and was ultimately derailed by his own Party because they thought he couldn’t win. The mercurial John Kasich surely would have been a more stabilizing influence for the volatile GOP caucuses, but the public craved pizzazz. As for the rest of the bloated Republican field, the few who seemed capable of pushing back hard on Hillary would likely go down in defeat, as they did not appear to have the populist sentiment needed to flip enough blue states.

So between the self-immolating Republican field, and the rigged Democratic primary, there should be no wistful looking back as though somehow a better choice eluded us; there wasn’t. If I put my left hand in water, and I put my right hand in water, I cannot complain that my hands are wet. Let’s not bestow all the vitriol upon Trump. It is very much a shared legacy of Decision ’16.

So Mr. Comey can spare us his considered judgment. He should instead contemplate on all the missteps he took in contributing to this detrimental condition. His self-righteous assessment is not what’s needed. He would do well to reflect upon his own culpability in the enabling of the Clinton candidacy and the subversion of the Trump presidency. Sadly, Mr. Comey personifies how the government appears to function in this Deep State era: personal interests may now be placed above those of the nation and, in many cases, above the law.

The political fallout for this President embedded in the omnibus spending bill heading to his desk today will be his undoing. For someone who apparently relishes the sound bites, the attention, the accolades that move him to rally his base while exorcising his (many) detractors, he’s inexplicably chosen to take a pass on this opening. Odd, since ‘stir the pot’ is the most consistent rationale you can apply to what he says, and what he does.

This spending bill of 23 March 2018 presents Mr. Trump with a rich opportunity to show up the lawmakers, vilify the swamp denizens, call out McConnell, Ryan and the other RINOs for the Bush-remnant GOP slugs that they are, soak up the applause, and pay no price. Citing the glee of Schumer and Pelosi over this bill’s bankrolling of the progressive left agenda, he could have vetoed it loudly, with fanfare and smugness. He could have scolded the GOP leadership for betraying Republican principles, and ask out loud how they expect to hold power in the Fall by selling out their constituents in the Spring. He could pronounce that he has “saved them from themselves” by vetoing the bill.

Consequences? None. The Congress is so bought into this spending bill, and they have crafted so many layers of political cover, that a Trump veto would be overridden and the bill would pass, averting an election year shutdown. It has 65 “yea” votes in the Senate; getting two more to flip and sustain an override is no great feat. Mitch McConnell could say, we kept the government working. Paul Ryan could say, we did it for our armed forces. The leadership would say the President didn’t appreciate the full impact of the bill failing, so an override is justified. Chuck Schumer could tout the shackles of sequester have at long last been broken, and Nancy Pelosi could champion the continued support of the downtrodden by the rest of us. Just like they’re doing now, only with the added delight of an end zone spike for a veto override, further splintering the Republicans.

But even with a failed veto, or maybe especially with a failed veto, Trump could talk the tough talk, be the big man, hit the stump as the last vestige of fiscal conservatism; a self-portrait as the only man keeping his promises to the people. There’s every chance the GOP may have spent its way into oblivion, and the Democrats may have abandoned DACA and all it stands for one time too many. But Trump, now there’s a man of the people: the only person in Washington fighting to MAGA. With anybody else, you could say ‘taking the moral high ground’, but that hardly applies. But had he used his veto, he could revel in castigating the GOP establishment for their spendthrift capitulation and abandonment of principles, and mercilessly excoriate the Democrats for deserting the Dreamers. For once, he could have outmaneuvered his Beltway adversaries. But no.

Instead, he’ll do it “on the cheap”, like most of his private sector ventures, and try and have it both ways. He’ll say he had deep misgivings over the size of the bill; the debt and deficit implications, the pittance afforded for his border wall, and profess faux-consternation over the Dreamers’ predicament. But he’ll still sign it. He’ll later say he was against it, trying to suck goodwill from the marrow. He’ll lament aloud how he wishes now that he’d vetoed it, but he couldn’t justify compromising our terrific military. He will shamelessly fall back on the McConnell-Ryan argument to bolster his criticism of them.

Where in the world are his domestic policy advisors, and more plainly, who are they? The Trump base is not going to sit still for runaway spending, semantics on amnesty and a border wall, half-truths and half-promises. Yes, he has delivered on plenty. But his dismissive treatment of critics, both scurrilous and legitimate, won’t carry the day with those who believe your word is your bond. Massive missteps on Obamacare and immigration, and missed opportunity on fiscal responsibility, will cost him core support. His domestic policy shortcomings will undermine his foreign policy achievements in the hearts of those who elected him to office. They will see him as no better than the rest.

They will stay home.

The Democrats will be the new majority.

His tenure as lame duck shall commence.

It first came to my attention last Spring in the World Baseball Classic tournament. I noticed the players taking enormous pride in playing under the banner of their national heritage; whether they were native to these competing countries or first and second generation American-born, celebrating their birthright playing on their ancestral team. I found their enthusiasm refreshing, their sense of family and kinship enhanced by the presence of countrymen. One country, one flag, one language, one people, one purpose. Homogeneous.

On February 28th of this year, Major League Baseball’s mlb.com website published a projection of the starting lineups we could look forward to in 2018 for each of the thirty clubs. They listed likely batting orders for position players, 9 in the American League and 8 in the National League, projected for each team. A veritable fan’s guide that peeks into the new season. Now to say this is a preliminary assessment is an understatement. There will be injuries, trades, free agent signings; rookies who surprise and veterans who retire that will all impact these projections prior to Opening Day’s first pitch.

Still, for a baseball enthusiast, perusing the rosters and potential lineups is a guilty pleasure. And that is when I realized how multi-national major league ball players had become. I counted 255 everyday starting position players listed. I then clicked on each player’s bio to discover his place of birth. My survey is by no means scientific, as it is but a snapshot in time, yet there is no denying that it is telling. 91 out of 255 of the starting position players (35.7%) were listed as foreign-born. I counted 13 countries plus the US territory of Puerto Rico as contributing homegrown players to MLB rosters. Two-thirds of them come from the Dominican Republic (30) and Venezuela (31). Again, this does not include pitchers or reserve and utility players, as I did not drill down the entire roster for each team; I just noted what was listed for the birthplace of the everyday position players. But it is a safe assumption that those not researched would have a comparable, if not greater, representation of foreign-born vs. American-born players. After all, second-tier pitchers and bench players are the lesser-paid ballplayers, and more lower-paid players are signed off of the sandlots of the Caribbean than Ivy League campuses. At least I think that’s true. I don’t have empirical data to back that up, except to say that it makes sense.

But compensation inequity is really my point. For decades when conservatives would argue that immigration, both legal and illegal, costs jobs and depress wages, the left would counter that immigrants do the jobs Americans are unwilling to do. For years the pro-immigration groups have conjured up the image of fruit pickers, landscapers, janitors and chambermaids, doing the so-called “back-breaking work” Americans eschew, making immigrants an essential cog in the wheel of our great economy. It all fit together nicely; the GOP liked the status quo because big business got its cheap labor source, and the progressive left could continue pushing for the rights of the underclass to come out of the shadows and vote Democratic. One side bought off, one side sold out. What passes nowadays as a win-win.

Yet I look at the MLB rosters and say can teams not find an American kid to play shortstop for the Mets? Can they not find a catcher for the Cubs or a center fielder for the Phillies? There are 88 other examples out of 255 jobs. That’s a 35% attrition rate of American jobs in one segment of one business. Isn’t it likely the talent located in the international market is comparable and cheaper than home grown talent? Are major league teams coveting this arena of cheap labor? It seems they do because they go to great lengths to preserve their self-imposed spending caps for international player signing bonuses called a Bonus Pool. Teams have about $5M in bonus pool money to lure international players into signing player contracts. Teams husband this resource so closely that they’ll even trade a player to another team in exchange for acquiring some that team’s bonus pool to increase their own!

Are the immigrants brought here by MLB taking American jobs and depressing wages? In the MLB draft, college players command hefty signing bonuses, often six and seven-figure payouts. In the sandlots of the poverty-stricken Dominican Republic, a major league team can sign twenty teens for $10K each and bring them to the US, depositing them into the grist mill of minor league baseball. If one out of the twenty makes it, great. If the other nineteen wash out, small potatoes. Still way under what it costs to sign one first round collegiate from Wisconsin. But this stockpiling of international prospects makes it all the more difficult for an American kid from a junior college to get a look.

And how exactly is MLB managing to get work visas and green cards for players from places like Venezuela and Cuba? How well are these young people vetted for criminal backgrounds and ties to drug cartels? How vital is it that we import ballplayers from Communist countries? How deep do the MLB hooks go into the State Department to make all this happen?

And what are we getting on the field in exchange for dispensing with American-born ballplayers? The baseball commissioner bemoans how slow the game moves, but seems to tolerate meetings at the mound that involve multiple players conversing in multiple dialects, and the manager visiting with an interpreter. Are we getting role models for our children? Hardly. Hero-worship can’t happen if the player cannot speak English, establish a persona a kid can relate to via mingling with fans, handling interviews and through community service. To be sure, many players do participate in worthy causes that elevate their profile, but others do not, be it due to their language difficulties or lack of assimilation. This can result from an eagerness to recruit production over character, ignoring the finer points, and bringing the by-product of the slums of the Latin America and the Caribbean: a bejeweled, tattooed, pierced, nouveau-riche narcissist athlete with an unbuttoned shirt and a hat cocked sideways who interacts poorly with fans, collects wealth beyond measure in his life experience, and demonstrates little in terms of publicly expressed gratitude for the game and the country. It’s troubling that he’d rather play for Curacao or Columbia in the World Baseball Classic, then abscond back to his native village where he is feted by the locals while half his newly acquired wealth is spent on private security so his mother isn’t kidnapped for ransom. Until, of course, MLB can arrange visas for the whole family.

And is MLB the only business out there, scouting the globe for specialized talent that can be acquired on the cheap? The evidence would say no. Major news stories have reported the inequities of Silicon Valley recruiting Pakistani tech workers to displace higher-paid American workers, and US hospitals offering resident positions to doctors from India at a lower wage than Americans graduated from our best universities. Is this what all the flowery talk of globalization and diversity really comes down to?

The left can talk all they want about lettuce-pickers and day laborers, but the truth is the US is becoming a nation of displaced workers at every end of the spectrum. Artificial Intelligence will replace the menial jobs at first, then move on to supplanting manufacturing jobs. Immigration, legal or illegal, and irrespective of what prevails among merit-based, lotteries, and chain migration, will inevitably erode American jobs regardless. All while we’re sold a bill of goods by the left.

I don’t know how it will all shake out, but I’d sure like to see a return to the spirit shown in the World Baseball Classic. Where players played for their home team. The USA included.

Source:
https://www.mlb.com/news/projected-2018-lineups-for-all-30-mlb-teams/c-266895088

Leaders and lawmakers appear particularly motivated this time around to embrace a myriad of ideas in the wake of the Parkland, FL school shooting tragedy. In no particular order or preference there are calls for to arm school teachers and staff; deploy additional School Resource Officers (both uniformed and covert); improve the background check process; ban bump stocks that augment automatic weapons; enhance the options available to mental health professionals to temporarily detain and/or place into custody those deemed to be a risk to public safety; and restrict the purchase of firearms to those 21 years old and over. The old standbys of limiting magazine capacities and eliminating automatic and semi-automatic weapons all together have never gone away, so we’ll count those as still out there.

Arming teachers and staff will do more harm than good. Student-teacher altercations are prevalent in schools, hence the need for SROs in the first place. Gone are the days when twelve nuns rode herd on eight hundred adherent pupils; assaults on teachers, and student-on-student violence are a common occurrence. How long will it take before we hear a teacher had to shoot a student in “self-defense”? How long will it be before we see a student has disarmed a teacher and taken their weapon, because the teacher was afraid to fire on an unarmed student? Leading to what? The SRO having to shoot the student now armed with the teacher’s gun? And adding to the stress and split-second decisions required of the gallant first responders, how long before a responding police officer caps a gun-toting teacher in the hall, mistaking him for the shooter?

Certainly there are faculty and staff both capable and willing to put themselves between a shooter and their students, and they deserve the ability to shield the students with more than just their bodies. Should the high school commandant of the ROTC be armed? Perhaps. Should the retired US Marine-football coach be allowed to carry? Possibly. Should a vice principal recently retired from law enforcement bring her weapon to school? Maybe. But as noble and reasonable as it sounds to arm a select few that meet the President’s nebulous definition of “adept with a firearm”, it will inevitably result in tragedy somewhere.

Additional School Resource Officers sounds fine, a course of action few would argue with, save for the cost. However, we learned this tactic is not a panacea for prevention, nor even one for timely interdiction. If a shooter is willing to die, then some innocents will die until the first responders, well, respond. The number of casualties will depend upon the training, reaction and skills of the law enforcement officer(s) on site, but to suggest more officers will insure “this never happens again” is the blather of politicians. If you don’t know that, well you should. The secondary notion that schools could deploy “air marshal-type” undercover officers as a deterrent to the open invitation presented by a “gun free zone” is similarly ludicrous. It has not been proven school shooters are cowards, per se. To pre-suppose the potential of encountering a covert law enforcement officer would dissuade a delusional person from attempting carnage because this may not the “gun free zone” it’s cracked up to be, is a leap too far.

Calls for improving the background check process is demonstrative of abject government failure. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the vehicle which rendered mandatory waiting periods passé, (a brainchild in many ways of the National Rifle Association), lacks the essential input of criminal records nationwide as only 38 states currently participate, and does not include persons with adjudicated mental illness. This is criminal negligence. Those in charge should be prosecuted. It is government ineptitude on a scale that should surprise no one. To believe the government capable of an undertaking such as a national background check system, and manage it flawlessly absent horrific scandal, is pie-in-the-sky Pollyanna-thinking. Where did the blind confidence in our institutions come from? Time after time there is a loophole, a hiccup, a dropped ball, and yet, we believe. Shameful, the price of bliss.

Next up is the incongruous ban on the bump fire stocks, a trendy bogeyman that came out of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. From Columbine to Parkland, can anyone make a case that the inability to purchase this accessory would have, in any way imaginable, changed the outcome of these tragedies? Until and unless federal law enforcement ever comes clean on what really happened at the Mandalay Bay, we’ll never know for sure what role, if any, this device played in the planning, execution, and body count there. But by all means, let’s demonize it and outlaw it, unconstitutionally and by presidential decree if necessary. Nice precedent you’re setting there.

The most fertile ground for solution and prevention lies in the field of mental health. But the four entities that could divine a likely shooter before the fact are as disjointed as pre-9/11 intelligence agencies. For progress on this front to occur, there would have to be coordinated information sharing, and empowering legislation, to enable the juvenile justice system, the mental health professionals, the school superintendents and local law enforcement to identify, detain, and evaluate persons deemed “most likely”. Those who demonstrate the characteristics by word or deed that align with known behavioral disorders associated with school shooters can be involuntarily remanded for clinical evaluation and treatment. Their owned firearms can be confiscated, and their names go in to the NICS database to insure they cannot get a weapon. This gives the government, already stipulated as inept in so much of its oversight responsibilities, an inordinate position of power over its citizens, and the potential for abuse is sky high. Even imagining juvenile courts, psychologists, school boards and cops could ever agree on much of anything, let alone the predicative analytics of who might be a school shooter one day, is a reach. But this is the place that promises something nearing a step in the right direction.

Restricting firearm sales to persons 21 and over, without an unambiguous waiver for our military personnel, is farcical, and worthy only of the political pandering it represents. Currently, handgun sales are age-restricted, a serious abrogation of the rights of voting-age citizens, but the outcry is muted so, so be it. A rural single mom may need more than a restraining order one day to protect her family from an abusive ex-spouse. But when the compassionate deputy tells her, “lady, you might want to get a gun”, she can’t be left to answer, “I will, as soon as my birthday comes around”. There better be allowances for the lawful ownership of rifles by persons 18 and older. Maybe not assault rifles, but owning a firearm for home defense cannot be abridged by the arbitrary, event-driven assignation of 21 and older.

The issue of assault rifles is wholly overblown given the statistical reality that gun deaths are overwhelmingly attributable to handguns. But automatic rifles are the headline news du jour so something must come to pass. The ammunition fired from these weapons is truly lethal, and gruesome mass casualties will result each time one is used for mayhem by a pathological killer. But an outright ban is politically untenable at present, primarily because it is a soothing balm and not a demonstrable solution. To seek that remedy will result in inevitable deadlock and no action. What would be palatable, and even beneficial, would be a type of “extreme vetting” (remember how well that has been received in other quarters) whereby police interview prospective buyers to determine their fitness to own such a weapon, (let’s see if a ninth circuit judge in Hawaii will weigh in on that one). Naturally a surtax would be levied on the purchaser to cover the additional expense of such measures, but freedoms do come with a cost. Of course criminals and gang bangers will not submit to such a requirement; they will continue to burglarize gun stores for their armaments (a recent phenomenon that rivals the frequency of after-hour jewelry heists and electronics store break-ins nationwide, by the way). But we can live with that because MS 13 generally does not shoot up schools, not as yet anyway. Let’s just be damned sure we vet anyone responsible enough to follow the law. Instead of the mindless push to restrict sales, perhaps manufacturers could be incentivized to not produce them. We paid farmers cash to stop growing corn, maybe there’s a place for subsidizing gun makers to curb production?

So where does this leave us? We have dozens of corporations exploiting the tragedy by smugly severing their “branding ties” with the NRA. Not with Planned Parenthood though; you don’t hear calls for banning embryotomy scissors. Which is responsible for the deaths of more children, the forceps or the bump stock?

How in God’s name can the NRA be accountable for no one in law enforcement heeding the clarion call? How can the NRA be held to account for the unfathomable dereliction of duty displayed by the Sheriff’s Office that fateful morning? How can the NRA be blamed for the failures of government to manage a background check database so bereft of data as to be just short of fraudulent; a placebo at best when you factor in the mental health omissions.

We have a sheriff-politician in Broward County unwilling to acknowledge the epic failure of his deputies to act. We have the remnants of the Obama-era “Promise Program”, which incentivized schools to under report campus crime, especially crimes attributed to minorities. Is this why the numerous complaints about shooter Nikolas Cruz never made it into the system? Will we learn the degree to which Chicago-transplant Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie followed the tenets of the Promise Program to the detriment of all? Unlikely.

• We have an FBI that defied every convention in dismissing the real-time, actionable leads provided on Nicholas Cruz, to this day without adequate explanation. The Hawaii governor was more forthcoming over the bogus incoming ballistic missile alert.
• We have a shooter in Las Vegas that dutifully filed forty-four assault rifle purchase applications with the ATF that was not flagged as worthy of inquiry. Exactly how many purchases of automatic weapons does it take to raise an eyebrow there?
• Devin Kelley shot up a Sutherland Springs church in Texas as the result of a domestic row with a weapon he purchased despite incarceration for domestic assault because military bureaucrats neglected to enter his conviction into the database.

This is government ineptitude on a breathtaking scale. And we’re only talking schools, concerts and churches. We’re not even touching on the botched prevention of domestic terrorism at the Boston Marathon and the Pulse Nightclub. Were the San Fernando shooters stoppable? If the State Department was more selective and did better job managing visas, maybe. If neighbors who witnessed bomb making weren’t cowed by political correctness from saying something, perhaps. Was the Fort Hood shooting preventable? Absolutely, provided the armed forces were permitted to operate as a military unit and not a human resources department. Innocent bloodshed has been the hallmark of government’s social experiments, and the lab rats are dead Americans. The PC-culture abridges freedom of speech; the lockstep, uncurious mainstream media abridges freedom of the press; and a rogue judiciary abridges freedom of religion. And to what end? To expand a government that neither serves nor protects its citizenry.

Nowhere, however, are those in charge addressing the common denominator in many of the country’s most notorious mass killings: the aforementioned government ineptitude. It is perfectly reasonable to assume government will fail to control, manage and correct the behavioral deficiencies of three hundred and thirty million people, many of whom have no roots in the country or a working understanding of what makes society function here. But when it has never been more clearly illustrated that government failure, on so many levels, is ground zero for blame the more this case is studied, how can it be that we turn to government for explanation and follow its corrupted lead in seeking answers? If government was proven equally negligent in enforcing traffic laws, would we ban automobiles or demand better government?

Let’s just be honest with these kids, and with each other. The underlying problems that lead to mass shootings are not the guns on store shelves. The causes emanate from a broken culture, absent the cohesive values of a nuclear family and a moral code reflecting a secular society. In place of God, country, and family, we are offered groupthink, neo-diversity, and bureaucracy. That evolution will not serve us well.

What I find vexing in the media coverage of the whole Collusion-Dossier-Dirty-Tricks story is the inability of journalists to ascribe proper rationale to the “Comey October Surprise”, namely his brief re-opening of the Clinton email server scandal in the run-up to the 2016 election. Republicans identify Comey, and his underling Andrew McCabe, as lynchpins of an FBI-DOJ conspiracy to derail the Trump campaign, and subsequently, to undermine his presidency. And there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to support that argument. Concurrently, the Democrats point to Comey as the man who torpedoed Hillary’s candidacy by resurfacing the email server investigation, er, matter, at a most inopportune time, dooming her election. That argument, too, can be easily supported, at least anecdotally. So how come there is no definitive understanding as to Comey’s motives to act in such a bi-polar fashion?

The FBI issued its findings exonerating Clinton in June 2016 with the Director’s assurances that every recoverable email relating to the matter had been thoroughly reviewed for its classification status and that Clinton’s actions in this regard did not rise to the level of criminality. That is a lie. The Director also offered assurances that all parties related to the matter had been interviewed and no criminal wrongdoing could be established. That, too, is a lie. Further, the Director assured all devices engaged in the trafficking of classified emails through the Clinton server had been confiscated, inspected, scrubbed and/or destroyed, and could no longer be susceptible to hacking by foreign actors or enemy agents. This was not a lie, per se, it was however a telling oversight.

It brings to mind Donald Rumsfeld’s clever term, “the unknown unknowns”. For unbeknownst to the Director and his crack pool of counter-terrorism investigators, there came to light a laptop in the possession of an ex-Congressman-turned-internet-celebrity (to be polite), Anthony Weiner, that contained heretofore unseen email correspondence sent and received by Ms. Clinton’s trusted advisor and confidante, Uma Aberdeen, the estranged wife of the laptop-possessor.

This revelation had to bring great consternation to Comey, who defied convention and spoke publicly, and at great length, that no evidence of criminality could be found in the matter. And yet, here is this laptop that may contain ironclad contradictions to his public assurances. Chances were good that the emails on this laptop were duplicative in nature to the ones already examined in his investigation, and therefore moot as far as undermining Comey’s exoneration of Hillary.

But what if? Suppose there were references to the FBI’s sources and methods in the matter that point directly to a singular conclusion: the fix was in. That agents had dispensed with standard protocol in their interviews and that Hillary and her cabal – Aberdeen, Cheryl Mills, even Bill Clinton – got preferential treatment, to include attorney privilege, formal immunity and limited disclosure of records. All courtesy of biased investigators and DOJ lawyers now known to be both anti-Trump and wary of future retribution from a President Clinton.

Could Comey chance that? Could he hope that the publicly disgraced Anthony Weiner was not privy to the laptops contents, and that Weiner wouldn’t try to parlay this discovery into leniency at sentencing? I don’t think so. I think Comey convinced himself that he had to know the unknown. And to find that out would take a warrant for the laptop.

And for a warrant, he had to re-open the investigation.

Not what he wanted to do, but too bad Hillary, self preservation rules.

There are four precincts being heard in determining what’s best for our country vis-à-vis releasing the memo.

First, Devon Nunes, one of the document’s authors, and the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee that voted to release it. A Republican and a partisan, Nunes seems out of his depth both procedurally and politically in managing this committee’s yearlong effort into an array of overlapping issues. His springtime gaff in preemptively sharing classified intelligence learned from White House sources during the short-lived “unmasking scandal” made him appear somewhat unhinged and resulted in his temporary recusal from the committee he chairs. He thinks the American people need to see this memo and stands by every word as unshakable fact.

Second, Nunes’ counterpart, Adam Schiff, is a California Democrat, which instinctively has one cast a wary eye. He has denigrated every effort by the committee and its chairman to bring about any consensus conclusion. The stonewalling of the Deep State in its withholding of documents and failure to produce witnesses goes unaddressed by Schiff. Instead, he obsesses to every open mic that the committee’s work has proceeded solely to undermine the Mueller investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russia, making one unsubstantiated charge after another. He says the memo is a pack of lies and should not be released for fear it will compromise national security. He is preparing his own memo for release.

The third arbiter, of course, is the Executive Branch and the President has been unambiguous in his thinking that the memo should be released. After all, he has read it, he knows there is nothing in it damaging to him, and he knows its content will cast his antagonists at Justice and the FBI in an unfavorable light. Win, win. But not really; because if the release somehow does derail Mueller by demonstrating the Mueller probe was born of an underhanded bias and criminal manipulation of the FISA Court, then Mueller could be disbanded. Trump would never be vindicated, and cries from the left that Trump cheated justice will reverberate throughout the mid-terms, and the Democrats will campaign for the House with the argument that impeachment is the last vestige of remedy. And the Trump-haters will buy it

Lastly, we have the DOJ and the FBI. They, too, do not support release, claiming that the document contains”inaccuracies and omissions” harmful to national security and the government institutions (i.e. Justice and the FBI) that protect us. Ironically, it is purported the memo makes a case that the FBI and Justice Department colluded in presenting evidence to a FISA Court that contains “inaccuracies and omissions” to mislead the court into granting a warrant to electronically surveil one Carter Page, an American citizen with business interests in Russia who held an advisory role on the periphery of the Trump campaign. Should these charges be proven correct, then those responsible for FISA Court abuses, possibly Bruce Ohr at Justice and James Comey, Andrew McCabe, et al at the FBI, could face criminal charges. So asking Ohr’s boss, Rod Rosenstein, and McCabe’s boss, Christopher Wray, to pass judgment on the providence of releasing this memo is as suspect as the three competing agendas detailed above.

Now the voice yet to be heard should be the loudest: the media. Perhaps if Tom Hanks were really the editor of the Washington Post, as in the big screen’s salute to journalistic integrity, The Post, he could bring some Ben Bradlee-esque gravitas to this conundrum. After all, it was the Washington Post and the New York Times that railed for the release of the Pentagon Papers, a document thought to be damaging to the nation’s security as well, in wartime no less! But here, silence. Even the potential for government abuse that is being bandied about: spying on Americans and lying to the court; malfeasance at the FBI and Justice Department, a Deep State leveraging of surveillance assets for political gain, at the height of a presidential election no less; the harbinger of a looming constitutional crisis resulting from a special counsel; why, there’s not a mystery novelist born who wouldn’t take a crack at this one. And yet, crickets from the journalist elites.

And to revisit the topic of the FBI for a minute, isn’t it time we rid ourselves of the J Edgar Hoover fairy tale? This was a man who secretly spied and collected dirt to muzzle his critics and build an unassailable position of power in government. It is Hoover’s DNA that runs through the Bureau, and it is that legacy of absolute power corrupting absolutely that we may be seeing manifested today.

Since we’re so mindful of taking down statues and memorials, perhaps we should think about renaming the FBI Building, instead of commemorating the Father of the Deep State. Maybe one day (and for good reason) it will be called the Inspector General Michael Horowitz building.

President Trump can make room in the limelight for the economic successes attributable to his predecessor, and still bask comfortably in his own achievements. He could acknowledge the economic realities of 2008 and recognize, for better or worse, the Obama administration did take action to preserve the banking and automobile industries, and to pave the way for the eventual comebacks of the real estate market and the stock market. He could disagree with the methodology used: taxpayer bailouts, not the free market, saved the banks and car makers; and the rebound in real estate and stocks was painfully slow, driven by artificially low interest rates.

He could then easily pivot to what makes America Great Again, and make the case that his policies were the catalyst to a robust recovery. The progressive left, and its media apparatus, do insist that Trump inherited an economy on the mend. It should be conceded that Obama’s avoidance of economic collapse was ultimately good, despite the incalculable waste and debt resulting from the process.

What Trump needs to contrast is the “quality of recovery” between his policies and Obama’s. Anemic GDP growth and flat wages were the hallmarks of the Obama recovery. These were the two areas Obama’s recovery couldn’t overcome because Obama was ideologically opposed to the solutions: less regulation and lower taxes. We were instead told this was the “new normal” in a global economy.

Once Trump scaled back government regulations, GDP began to grow. Once Trump introduced pro-business tax reform, wages grew. Democrats are unable to effect these two critical fixes to a stagnant economy because they result in smaller government, which is anathema to Democrats.

This is the argument the GOP should be making on the stump to counteract Democratic charges that Trump simply cashed in on Obama’s groundwork for recovery, to benefit the rich. If the GOP is to preserve their majorities through the mid terms, contrasting the economic impact among the electorate between eight years of the Obama recovery, versus what will be nearing the two year mark of Trump policies, should be an easy sell.

There still remains the one big question.

Here we are on the day of House vote, uncertain of the outcome of whether Obamacare will be repealed, will be repealed and replaced, or will endure because Republicans cannot agree. It seems unfathomable that Republican majorities in both houses cannot find the spine to do the big thing, the one thing their voters and candidates alike professed must happen: the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a misnomer all the more evident by its imminent collapse resulting from its un-affordability.

For seven years the GOP bemoaned that Harry Reid wouldn’t allow a vote on repeal, and even if it had passed, that the law’s namesake in the Oval Office who would veto the futile effort. “Give us the Senate!” they intoned. “Give us the White House!” they implored. They got both and now look.

DJT was nominated in July: like it or not, he would be the party’s standard bearer against HRC. The GOP platform was unambiguous on repeal and replace. Mind you, it was originally simply “repeal”; “replace” crept in to the conversation to blunt the hue and cry of you can’t just take it away and leave the masses uncovered! The women! The children!

And then “replace” got embellished: it’ll be cheaper, it’ll be better, more choices, less government control, and so forth. How was this to be achieved? Nothing of substance was proffered by those touting replacement throughout the campaign. Why was that? Why was there not a think tank of lawmakers at work crafting this elusive “replacement” legislation months before the election? Why wasn’t the President-elect handed a bill that was fully endorsed by the majorities on November 9th?

Possibly because they knew then what we’re seeing now: the very structure of the ACA is “mined” with political pitfalls for those seeking its demise. Premiums, deductibles and co-pays were, by design, all slated to escalate in ’17 and ’18; only an infusion of subsidies would stabilize it, coupled with a bailout by any other name, to keep the insurers engaged and the exchanges open. Both inevitabilities would be anathema to Republicans, but very doable for spendthrift Democrats.

And therein lies the beauty of the ACA: the GOP is saddled with a lose-lose proposition. Pony up the new costs as laid in for the post-second term Obama years, or let the mainstream media pick you to death with horror stories of denied coverage for the “most vulnerable among us”. Children without care and the dying elderly will be the laid at the GOP doorstep. The biased reporting bolstered by skewed statistical argument will shout down all reason, and in the ’18 midterms Republicans will be cast as the curmudgeons who took away an entitlement. They’ll be left explaining to the mirror on Fox News that the ACA was unsustainable under its financial house of cards while the woes of the newly disenfranchised will be covered wall-to-wall by the opposition with glee. Conversely, the in-fighting among Republicans over whether to fund the monstrosity in order to avoid this voter backlash will splinter the party. Death by a thousand cuts, or by hari-kari, is still death.

So, back to the big question: why in the world did the Republicans wait until after the inauguration to begin working on this contentious legislation? Why did they not afford a political novice coming into office a fully-vetted, fully-approved alternate to the ACA that they knew had to be tethered to any repeal effort? How, instead, could they think a hastily-convened bill that conservatives feel is too costly, and liberals feel is too restrictive, would possibly pass both Houses?

Because they didn’t think Trump would win. They had already braced for the fight with a Clinton White House over ACA spending rather than a cohesive plan to repeal and replace. And now DJT is handed this flawed bill to champion at his own peril, as his party can’t even guarantee they’ll vote for it.

That is what’s called getting “swamped” by the swamp.

3/13/2017
12:05pm

Last night Donald Trump brought his “Thank You Tour” to Michigan, energetically delivering his post-campaign stump to an enthusiastic crowd. He spoke from prepared text, with occasional impromptu digressions, and his messaging was well received. But there was a missed opportunity.

Trump’s advisors counsel emphasis on inclusion when publicly relishing his victory. That is why amidst the ridicule of the media and punditry class who “got it wrong”, he is certain to call out the groups who surprisingly put him over the top. He touts the African American vote that surpassed Romney’s 2012 performance, asserting his “new deal for the inner cities” deprived Hillary of the overwhelming support she needed from this group. He lauded Hispanics for recognizing his call for strengthening legal immigration that protects the jobs and prospects for naturalized citizens and all who play by the rules, again draining numbers from a constituency Hillary relied upon. Mostly, there is the genuine gratitude to women voters who did not flock to Hillary like gender-lemmings, as was predicted. But Michigan presented a unique chance to speak to another group that eyes his incoming administration with great trepidation – the Muslim population. Imagine if he had offered this fully-rational, tough-love addendum, in his own inimical style, in his oratory:

“You know, we are here in Michigan. Michigan, home to some of the largest Muslim-American communities in the country. Hard working people. People who suffered greatly in their homelands at the hands of tyrants and jihadists. Many came here in the ‘90’s, from Kenyan refugee camps having escaped slaughter in their native Somalia by war lords and despots. Those refugees were grateful to America for taking them in. They worked hard, built communities, raised each other up, and appreciated the new life offered in America. Their children, and the children that followed, would be citizens of the greatest nation on Earth, a nation of freedom and tolerance for all.

“But this next generation has not fared so well. The failings of the education system, the shrinking job opportunities, the onset of cultural decline in America, the ever-intrusive social media and the resultant safe haven of political correctness, all contributed to a generation of disillusioned young people. They do not share the misery and persecution their parents endured to get here. Growing up in America, living off the hard work of their parents and handouts from the State, they had it good. But still, in light of world events, resentment began building; some from this generation were becoming radicalized. They were becoming radicalized on college campuses, radicalized on the internet, radicalized by ideological Imams, and radicalized in prisons.

“The generous America that took in their parents and grandparents, gave them refuge and sustenance, was no longer the shared memory. Instead, the propaganda from the left belittled American values and for many, gave rise to anti-American sentiment. It is this generation of Muslim-Americans I want to win back. I want to win them back by delivering on the expectations they had growing up; that America was indeed the land of opportunity, of tolerance, of justice for all. I want to give disaffected Muslims a reason to believe in America as their parents did. I want to build an economy and a standard of living in this country that will be the envy of the entire world and will invite assimilation, not promote identity politics.

“So I want to make clear, and no better place to say it than right here in Michigan, that my administration will by every means necessary protect this nation from the threat of radical Islamist terrorism. And if you want to throw your lot in with ISIS or al Qaeda and try to bring the same terror and totalitarian rule to these shores that caused generations of hardship and bloodshed in the Middle East and beyond, you will find me a formidable enemy. But if instead you want to make a home here in the United States, come here legally and with the right intentions, obey our laws, share in the coming prosperity of this country and give back as you can, you will find no greater friend than me”.

December 12, 2016