Sunday, November 17, 2024

Massive Deportation: "Action on Day One" and Step-By-Step

This version of shock-and-awe might work a lot better on illegal aliens persons not lawfully present in the U.S. than it did on Iraqis thirty-three years ago.

The Mail on Sunday has a terrific piece of reporting (here) that I don't see elsewhere in the news.  
The Mail on Sunday has spoken to those in Trump's inner circle who say his immigration plans have been top of the list in discussions held at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, in the days since his crushing victory. 

One lawyer familiar with the talks told me: 'Donald is preparing for a series of moves against illegal immigrants, which he says will cause 'shock and awe'. Kicking out illegals was the mainstay of his run for the White House and he knows people expect action on Day One. They will get it.' 

- snip -

'Step One' of the deportation programme is to target undocumented immigrants with ties to criminal gangs. It is dubbed 'Operation Aurora', after the Colorado town where members of the ruthless Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua turned apartment complexes into bases for drug dealing and prostitution. 

- snip -

'Step Two' is to expel more than one million people whose applications to remain in the US have been denied and who are on the deportation list. Then the round-up of the millions of remaining illegal immigrants will begin as part of 'Step Three'. Places of work, including farms and meatpacking plants, will be subject to raids (or 'targeted enforcement activities') – something the American Civil Liberties Union calls 'vile, unconstitutional and un-American'. 

- snip -

Trump is said to be planning to merge ICE and Border Patrol – the federal law enforcement agency – into one 'uber' organisation of 88,000 people and will release millions in central funding to add 40,000 new agents and 8,000 extra immigration court judges to expedite expulsions. 

- snip -

Intriguingly, Trump is exploring paying 'third-party safe countries' to take non-violent applicants while their visas are being processed. The scheme is similar to Rishi Sunak's now abandoned Rwanda plan, in which migrants who crossed the Channel illegally were to be flown to Rwanda to seek asylum there instead.

That last part is particularly intriguing to Brits, since their own government chickened out on the same plan a while ago. 

So The Trumpening will go eyeball to eyeball with the ACLU and cheap labor lobby governors early next year, and we'll see who blinks first.

Friday, November 15, 2024

DOJ and FBI Face the Gaetz of Hell


Rodin didn't know the half of it.























Here's the question of the day, who monitors or oversees the FBI?:
Within the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI is responsible to the attorney general, and it reports its findings to U.S. Attorneys across the country. The FBI’s intelligence activities are overseen by the Director of National Intelligence.
Say, isn't that incoming DNI Director the same former Congressional Representative and U.S. Army reservist that Hillary Clinton keeps calling a Russian agent, one who was personally dispatched by Putin to frustrate Hillary's presidential ambitions? And the same one who was placed on the TSA 'Quiet Skies' watchlist so her boarding passes would have the quad-S marking that got her a thorough airport shake-down whenever she flew? Yes, she is! 

If confirmed, she'll be TSA's boss's boss, and able to find out just who did that to her. Revenge like that is practically poetic.    

And the incoming Attorney General might be another former Congressman, one who was the subject of a futile but still years-long effort by DOJ to find any substance to allegations of his trafficking in underage women? (Even unsubstantiated sexual allegations are always the best kind to stir up a Washington scandal.) He is!

I'll bet those two each have a list of grievances with both DOJ and its subordinate Bureau, and if confirmed they'll be in the perfect position to double-team their former accusers. The accusatory institutions, anyway, if not the individuals, who will most likely decide to retire before The Trumpening 2 gets truly underway.     

The appointment of Gaetz, in particular, will bring on much hypocritical weeping and wailing over transgression of the apolitical norms that DOJ has respected at least since Watergate. 

But, did they really respect those norms? Obama's AG, Eric Holder, for instance, couldn't have found those supposed norms if he'd hunted for them with a GPS and a flashlight.

Maybe the appointment of Gaetz will turn out to be just superior trolling, a shot across the bows. Maybe even a misdirection intended to hide the REAL strike that will come from the new Department of Government Efficiency? Taking away half their personnel and facilities in the cause of efficiency would bring retribution to DOJ and FBI just as well as a head-on clash with AG Gaetz.

Either way, this will be the kind of spectacle that you could sell tickets to. 

Sunday, November 10, 2024

The Trumpening 2: A President Unburdened By What Has Been



Kamala could only wish to be so unburdened.

Saturday, November 9, 2024

The Trumpening 2: Sweep the Leg















Both President Biden and SecState Blinken have made the ritual pledges of full and cheerful cooperation with a peaceful transfer of power to their literally-Hitler opponent, who won the election, and his bitter-clinger-deplorable-Nazi-fascist-garbage supporters. You may think their sincerity is questionable.

Meanwhile, Trump is really not waiting to take power, as witness his phone call to Ukraine's President Zelensky - in which Z was surprised to find Elon Musk was on the line - and to some other heads of state. 

Trump is functionally the 47th President already, and that shouldn't be a surprise since, after all, he's been the President before.

This week, State announced that it has opened its presidential transition office, that workspace where incoming Presidents can do the staff work necessary to prepare for the transition that will come in a little over two months. However, as of COB Friday, the incoming administration has not contacted the transition office. 

That's because Trump has been operating his own transition office in private and on his own dime for some time now. Outsiders don't quite know what's happening inside. 

That secrecy is a foreshadowing of how he'll likely handle the transition of State and other agencies to his administration's control. They'll find out when it hits them.

One thing is not a secret: The Trumpening 2 will not be merciful to federal employees who try to resist the new administration.  
 

    

Thursday, November 7, 2024

American Driver Sentenced in UK Crash But Mystery Deepens: Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Interpreter?

Finally, our International Man of Mystery has been sentenced in that year-ago UK car crash to which he's plead guilty at every court appearance he's ever had.  

A typical news article is here:
An American who fled Britain after a car crash that left a mental health nurse seriously injured drove like an “arrogant young boy racer” the night of the collision, a judge told him.

Issac Calderon was sentenced to 32 months in jail after losing control of his Honda Accord following a high-speed overtaking manoeuvre and crashing head-on into a Mercedes being driven by Elizabeth Donowho in July 2023. 

Sentencing Calderon on Thursday, Judge Martin Jackson said: “Seven days before this accident you had bought a car and had not taken the trouble to make sure that it carried insurance.

- snip -

The judge was told Calderon worked for an American company in Peterborough as an interpreter and that he said to police after his arrest that he “played follow the leader” when he was driving.

Calderon’s lawyer told the court that he was not in the UK “as an American army official of any sort” and was driving along the A4103 between Worcester and Hereford to meet a friend he had met through online gaming.

Other UK news accounts added a little more on that lawyer's statement: ‘He was here working as an interpreter for an American company in Peterborough,’ [Patel] told the court. ‘He wasn’t going to see anyone from the SAS or anything of that sort.’

We further learned that "Calderon had been married for a couple of years, Mr Patel said, and was earning money in the UK to send back to his wife and his parents ... It was also said that his injuries meant he had to get a taxi to his workplace, costing £100 per day, before he was ‘let go’ when the firm found out about his involvement in the accident, and then left homeless ... He was then faced with a ‘stark choice’ and took up a contractual entitlement to a flight back to the United States paid for by the unnamed firm."

The Crown Prosecution Service's public statement is brief and dull, but here it is FYI.

This info fills in some of the picture of our Agent Double O Aspergers. Married man, devoted son, car owner, gamer, and employed by an unnamed American company as an interpreter. 

With him being a good Tejano from Humble, Texas, I'll accept that he can speak Spanish. But, well enough to be a certified interpreter? Maybe not.  

I see there are some distribution centers in the region in which the crash occurred. Perhaps he worked on import-export to customers in Spain? 

The mystery continues. 
  

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

UK FCO Minister Talking Trash About Trump

 

Post Election, the View From a Broad


'Allo, 'allo, 'allo, what's all this then? 

She's right, ain't she? Hapless PM Starmer and his Foreign Minister Lammy look like they'll be among the first victims of The Trumpening. 

A lesson could be learned there, like, don't trash-talk potential Presidents before they are well and truly out of power. 

Their German counterparts could benefit from our UK ally's mistake there.