Archive for the ‘Uncomfortable Truths’ Category

The War South of Us

Posted: November 23, 2019 by julietteochieng in News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths, war
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Winner takes them all

by baldilocks

What do marijuana, humans beings, fuel, and avocados have in common?

Answer: all are trafficked by Mexico’s cartels.

The cartel members showed up in this verdant stretch of western Mexico armed with automatic weapons and chainsaws.

Soon they were cutting timber day and night, the crash of falling trees echoing throughout the virgin forest. When locals protested, explaining that the area was protected from logging, they were held at gunpoint and ordered to keep quiet.

Stealing wood was just a prelude to a more ambitious plan.

The newcomers, members of a criminal group called the Viagras [yep], were almost certainly clearing the forest to set up a grow operation. They wouldn’t be planting marijuana or other crops long favored by Mexican cartels, but something potentially even more profitable: avocados. (…)

More than a dozen criminal groups are battling for control of the avocado trade in and around the city of Uruapan, preying on wealthy orchard owners, the laborers who pick the fruit and the drivers who truck it north to the United States.

“The threat is constant and from all sides,” said Jose Maria Ayala Montero, who works for a trade association that formed its own vigilante army to protect growers.

After seizing control of the forest in March, the Viagras announced a tax on residents who owned avocado trees, charging $250 a hectare in “protection fees.”

But they had competition. Rivals from the Jalisco New Generation cartel wanted to control the same stretch of land — and residents were about to get caught in the middle of a vicious fight.

Sounds ridiculous, yes? But, thinking it over, if the cartels want to seize of every inch of Mexico, it makes sense to diversify holdings and create a monopoly on popular good — like avocados.

By the way, there are tons of avocado trees here in California, so there should be no worries about a shortage of guacamole in the US – at least for now. We had a huge tree in the backyard of our house in the 1970s.

In fact, California is still ripe – no pun intended – with all manner of fruit trees. There are at least two lemon trees down the street from my present dwelling.

Considering, however, that California’s Organized Left is constantly looking for ways to gouge the state’s middle class, I wonder how long it will take them to come up with a plan to tax property owners for their trees.

Back to Mexico. Consider these thing: recently Mexico’s military surrendered in a war against one of the cartels and another cartel murdered members of an American family. President Trump even offered to send the US military to assist President Lopez Obrador against the cartels, to “wipe them from the face of the earth,” as President Trump so memorably put it. But the Mexican president refused.

So, what will happen to Mexico and Mexicans? The US continues to build a real wall in attempt to stem the flood of illegals. If, due to a strong wall, the flood recedes to a trickle, Mexicans will be forced to have a true confrontation with the cartels or submit and be ruled by them.

We’ll be neighbors with a gangster state and it will be fentanyl and avocados for all.

Not looking forward to that.

(Thanks to The Federalist)

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Gang Warfare

Posted: November 19, 2019 by julietteochieng in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics, Uncomfortable Truths, war
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by baldilocks

I estimate that everything we’ve seen since the assassination of President Kennedy has been Government-by-The-People Theater. No doubt, this charade goes much further back than that point in time, however, let’s call that event a conflagration – a reminder to all observers of who really runs things. Yes, I’m aware of the implication that I’m making: that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy by unseen actors, but don’t get it twisted; I’ve seen all the other conspiracy theories about it and I don’t subscribe to any of them. And it’s not my point anyway.

This is: I contend that every president from Lyndon B. Johnson to Barack H. Obama has walked in step with and/or been controlled by the bureaucracy, the secret cabals, the military-industrial complex (thank you, President Eisenhower), and the various other gangs that undergird this country. Yes, even Ronald Reagan.

And yet, somehow, we managed to elect one that refuses to walk in that path.

The gangs that began conspiring against him even before he won the nomination knew that he was the most dangerous choice for president — dangerous to them. He had made his money outside of government, had been in the public eye for decades and had a checkered private life that he didn’t try to hide. And, most frightening of all, he had claimed to be one of them: a Democrat. He entertained them, partied with them, listened to them.  He had probably seen and heard all manner of foul things that his “friends” prefer to remain private. And he had done so while drinking no alcohol and doing no drugs.

They had given him awards and begged him for jobs and for money.

Then, “out of the blue” he runs for president. In reality, he signaled what he was going to do back in the 1980s and did so again in 2012.

So, the gangs had to have something prepared just for him. However, it appears that he was ready for this, and for the next attack, and the next one and the one after that.

One of his missions is to expose the various means which the gangs have of enriching themselves on monies gotten from the pockets of the tax-payers. Ukraine seems to be both a means of thievery and a huge storage space for the loot.

This is why the government gangs will do anything to get him out of office. But before that happens, his reputation must be blasted to smithereens.

He knows this, which is why he will not be silent about it. As they use to say about a totally unrelated topic, silence equals death.

But he also keeps talking because it distracts the gangs from his more meaningful action against the gangs. While they continue to attempt to ruin his legacy before driving him out — or worse — he is on offense as well.

Everything will come to a head in one year or less.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

Follow Juliette on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum.

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Bribery and the Constitution

Posted: November 19, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

Bribery?

That’s the latest means the Democrats have tried to get rid of Donald Trump.

But there’s a Democrat congressman, Alcee Hastings, who might make a useful addition to the witness list because he’s only one of three federal officials who’s been charged with bribery under the impeachment clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Hastings, who is one of the longest-serving representatives in Congress, was elected in Florida in 1992. In fact, he almost got elected in 2006 as head of the House Intelligence Committee now holding the impeachment hearings.

But here’s what Hastings doesn’t want everyone to remember.

In 1981, Hastings was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence against two defendants when he was a federal judge in Florida. He also was accused of perjury in his testimony about the case. 

In 1983, Hastings was acquitted by a jury after his co-conspirator refused to testify in court. 

In 1988, the Democrat-controlled House took up the case, and Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury a vote of 413–3. He was then convicted on October 20, 1989, by the U.S. Senate on eight articles of impeachment. 

His co-conspirator, attorney William Borders, went to jail again for refusing to testify in the impeachment proceedings but was later given a full pardon by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

The Supreme Court, however, ruled in Nixon v. United States that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over Senate impeachment matters, so Hastings’s conviction and removal were upheld.

Hastings’s impeachment and removal had to do with an out-and-out bribe. No similar comparison can be made with the current investigation of Trump.

Nancy Pelosi and some Obama lawyers are trying to peddle the notion that the founding fathers had some other definition of bribery, but I’ve been unable to find the distinctions in my research of sources on the Constitution.

The past precedents for bribery under the impeachment clause, particularly that of Democrat Hastings, were clear cut examples of taking money for doing something that was illegal. 

Hastings would make an excellent example of what bribery really is under the U.S. Constitution!

Lessons from Watergate

Posted: November 12, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

As a young reporter, I covered part of the Watergate story, including the offices of Howard Baker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee that investigated President Nixon and his administration.

What I remember most of all was the bipartisan nature and transparency of the hearings in the Senate and the later those in the House—a stark difference to what’s happening now.

On February 7, 1973, the U.S. Senate voted 77-to-0 to approve a resolution to establish the select committee to investigate Watergate, with Democrat Sam Ervin named chairman the next day.

The hearings held by the Senate committee were broadcast from May 17 to August 7, 1973. The three major networks of the time agreed to take turns covering the hearings live. An estimated 85 percent of Americans with television sets tuned in to at least one portion of the hearings.

Baker and Ervin, both Southern lawyers, shared the spotlight, with little pretense of partisan politics. Baker became well known for his question of Nixon aides: What did he (Nixon) know, and when did he know it?

As established under the Constitution, the House needed to consider the issues for impeachment. Here, too, the representatives put aside most partisan antics.

On February 6, 1974, the House voted 410-4 to authorize the Judiciary Committee to launch an impeachment inquiry against the president. During the debate over this measure, Chairman Peter Rodino, a Democrat said, “Whatever the result, whatever we learn or conclude, let us now proceed with such care and decency and thoroughness and honor that the vast majority of the American people, and their children after them, will say: This was the right course. There was no other way.” House Republican leader John Rhodes said that Rodino’s vow was “good with me.”

Nevertheless, the House committee was not as transparent as the Senate investigation.

The House Judiciary Committee opened its formal impeachment hearings against the President on May 9, 1974. The first twenty minutes were televised on the major U.S. networks, after which the committee switched to closed sessions for the next two months. Altogether, there were only seven days of public hearings.

When the committee finally voted on articles of impeachment, the tallies included bipartisan support, with roughly one-third of the Republicans and all of the Democrats supporting the three articles that were passed.

Furthermore, a group of prominent GOP legislators convinced Nixon he should resign.

At almost every step of Watergate, Democrats and GOP may have disagreed. Ultimately, however, they sought the truth in a bipartisan and relatively transparent way.

That’s an important lesson the Democrats should consider.

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