What A Waste Of Money
NBC is reporting: Trump sending National Guard troops to Mexico border, but they won’t have contact with immigrants.
IOW we are going to spend money we don’t have because of the Republican corporate/1% tax giveaway to establish a ‘neighborhood watch’ in BDUs along the border with Mexico. I would guess someone explained the Posse Comitatus Act to the White House. We are screwing up the lives of National Guard troops who may be needed in a couple of months for hurricane recovery to make talking heads on Faux News happy.
The National Guard has never really recovered from its overuse by the Shrubbery, so this is not going to be helpful. They should pay for this out of the money designated for border security, not from the Defense budget.
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All they can legally do when they get down there is call the Border Patrol if they see someone crossing. I doubt they will even be issued any ammunition. This is beyond useless.
Note that federalized National Guard are as much covered by Posse Comitatus as the regular Army and USMC. The only National Guard who are not are those dispatched by state governors. None of whom are volunteering their Guard for this fools’ errand.
I don’t know where they’re going to house them. In California we failed to build barracks for our non-existent border forts. Once housing has been found or built I expect some sort of local economic boom. Since these weekend warriors are coming from the heartland it will be a net plus for our liquor stores, marijuana dispensaries and escort services. (tell the folks back home)
And California is like Mexico in this: No, we are not going to pay for this boondoggle but will happily sell goods and services to support it.
They could use recon drones to do everything the Guard will be able to do for a lot less money. If they don’t build facilities, it is going to mean tent cities. Where in hell are they going to put them that won’t piss off the locals who own the land along the border and don’t want their livestock scattered by people driving on their property? This is not going to be as easy as Trump thinks, and I’m not sure the governors of California [obviously] or New Mexico are going to want their National Guard involved in Trump’s kabuki theater performance for the talking heads at Faux.
Badtux, if the governor of a state decided to do this, the state would have to pay for it and there would be problems concerning jurisdiction.
The Coast Guard could do river patrols on the Rio Grande and actually enforce Federal laws, but they don’t have the people or equipment for the mission at present.
I would certainly hope that the local states would make “morale maintenance facilities [bars, etc] available to the troops, Shirt. 😉
Soooo… What happens to their regular jobs whilst they are playing cowboy? If they are stationed for any serious length of time, the companies they work for will have to find replacements. I sure would. And what about those that are self-employed or business owners? *shrug*
…And what about their bills while they wait for the pay system to start actually paying them something? There are laws that say employers have to re-hire them, and some continue their pay, but if they are self-employed or own a business, they are screwed.
Many National Guard troops are cops and firemen or in other civil service jobs. Who does those jobs when they are gone? Usually no one, so essential services in their communities suffer for the raving of a moron. in La Casa Blanca.
All true. But then, he is insane. *shrug*
I just read that apparently Trump Tower is on fire. Report was that there was a little smoke for awhile, then it suddenly expanded & is spreading.
That’s what happens when you overload the paper shredders! 😉
Haven’t seen it in the media yet, but this guy posted a couple vid’s on his Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/brianlawton9
Axios has an update on the TT fire.
1 person reported dead in Trump Tower fire
I saw that about the fire. This is the second fire in a year and it occurred in the residential area. It affected multiple units, so what happened to the fire walls between units? Even Florida requires fire resistant walls between the separate units in condos and apartment buildings.
Drumpf got on Twitter to to make the point that it is a well-built structure. That makes me suspect that the fire investigators are not going to be happy about what they find.
Ha! I thought something similar! Especially as there was a death & several injuries. I guess we’ll find out eventually… 🙂
In other news, have you seen Maddow’s latest?
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow outlines startling connection between Russian and American pro-gun rights groups
It turns out that Trump lobbied against the fire code improvements that are required for all new high rise buildings in New City in 1999, and got Trump Tower ‘grandfathered’ in as it was built before the requirements. So, no sprinklers and no reasonable fire walls.
Having looked at the pictures, the black smoke and orange flame makes it look like an oil fire, although the oil was probably plastic or foam, which would explain why 6 fire fighters were injured – they weren’t wearing air packs.
Anyone who rents an apartment in a high rise building that doesn’t have sprinklers is crazy. Given what that apartment costs, there will probably be a law suit from the relatives of the individual who died, as well as those who can’t use their apartments because of smoke damage.
Torshin, the oligarch involved with the NRA, was building the structure for Putin to funnel money into US elections. NRA says they didn’t use foreign money in elections, but there are a lot of ways of laundering money.
It took a while, but Trump finally killed someone on 5th Avenue and, as predicted, his boot-licking sycophantic supporters don’t care.
The issue with dispatching the National Guard under state jurisdiction is that thanks to Sheriff Joke Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, there is now a U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting states from enforcing federal immigration law, as well as another U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting states from having their own immigration laws. If the Arizona National Guard under state control sees a hundred illegals swarming the border, all they can do is call the Border Patrol, because there’s no probable cause to believe these immigrants are violating any state law and while under state control they’re prohibited under law from enforcing federal immigration law. (And under federal control they’re *still* prohibited, thanks to Posse Comitatus).
So basically, you’re dispatching highly trained armed soldiers to the border to make phone calls to the Border Patrol. Yay.
Trump Tower is an over-priced fire trap, a tenement for people with more dollars than sense. The guy who died has apparently been trying to sell the apartment for some time. He should have hired a real estate agent who spoke Russian 👿
Where in hell are the thousands of new Border Patrol agents that have been approved? They have 2 divisions worth of Border Patrol agents on the southern border and a battalion on the longer northern border [20k versus 500 for non military people]. Racism much?
And today Trump’s lawyer’s office got raided. Apparently someone in the New York US Attorney’s Office thinks Trump’s lawyer was laundering money from foreign sources in order to benefit the Trump campaign (which, I might add, is illegal), and any records seized will be financial records related directly to that question.
Cheeto Mussolini of course blew a fuse about how this was horrible attack on America blah blah. But nobody would have signed off on the search warrant unless there was already a money trail showing Russian money going into Cohen’s office, and an equal amount of money coming out the other side to benefit the Trump campaign. Raiding Cohen’s office at that point basically becomes a case of wrapping up the relationship between the two with actual financial records.
Basically, money laundering and embezzlement are the *only* two things that’ll get a lawyer raided. Attorney-client privilege is pretty comprehensive, but doesn’t cover actual participation of the attorney in a crime. If he laundered money for the Russians, well. I hope he has a good lawyer. :).
A search warrant related to an attorney is one of the most scrutinized documents in the system. You really have to nail down your ‘probable cause’ and be more specific than ever about what you want to search and what you are looking for to get it past the bosses and an issuing judge/magistrate. Finding a judge can be an additional problem as judges will be likely to know local lawyers and may recuse themselves as a result.
The fun bit is that all of this is in the jurisdiction of the New York State attorney general and may involve state crimes as well as Federal offenses. A Presidential pardon may not help. 😈