Articles by Herschel Smith

AZ Central:

Maricopa County jails will no longer detain people flagged by federal authorities as a courtesy for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Sheriff Paul Penzone said Friday evening.

Penzone told reporters that earlier Friday his office had been advised by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office that he faced a “threat of litigation” because of the procedure, which forced the Sheriff’s Office to change its policy.

Individuals no longer will be detained beyond the time that they otherwise should be released for an offense.

“There’s no further authority to detain an individual …” Penzone said. “We are following our legal obligation, to process that individual for release.”

Penzone said he alerted ICE officials to the change Friday, and the new policy would be effective immediately.

So for all you Sheriff Joe haters out there, it looks like you got your way.  Hey, no worries.  I’m sure it won’t affect the wealth you had set aside to buy that next home, or send your children to college.  Or your gun rights.  I’m sure they’ll vote conservative on those issues.

Welcome to immigrant-land.  I hope you like it.  It’s what you voted for if you’re in his county.  Unfortunately, the rest of us may end up paying your bills.  I’m getting damn tired of paying everyone’s bills.

WAFF.com:

Dear Citizens of Madison County,

My message today is to inform you of an impending Senate Bill in the Alabama Legislature directly threatening the safety for our Law Enforcement Officers and Deputy Sheriffs. It is a threat to law abiding citizens like you and me and a threat to this great state and country.

I am talking about  Alabama Senate Bill 24 (SB24) introduced by Senator Gerald Allen. This bill has proposed the repeal of the current Alabama statute that requires a permit, issued by the Sheriff of the county you reside, to allow for the full concealment of a handgun on your person or in a vehicle.

The pistol permit is a tool used by law enforcement to quickly screen an occupant of a vehicle or a person stopped in investigative detention to determine if they are lawfully allowed to possess a concealed handgun. Lacking a permit, the driver or person is in violation of state statute that prohibits concealed weapons. The permit is issued based upon a background investigation conducted by your local Sheriff and verifies the holder has not been convicted of a crime of violence to include domestic violence. The repeal of the current statute will allow everyone who was previously denied a lawful permit to now be able to conceal a handgun in their vehicle to drive or walk freely to attend church services, enter a movie theatre, football stadium, business or other gatherings in our communities.

Oh it does no such thing.  If you’re as felon convicted of a violent crime, which is about the only legitimate excuse a CLEO can use in Alabama, you can’t legally purchase a gun anyway.  Besides, violent felons won’t care about the law, and can carry as it is right now since you’re not there to watch them get dressed in the morning.

But this is about more, isn’t it?  Yes, it always is.

“As a Sheriff, I firmly back the Second Amendment,” says Abston … “This money generated from the pistol permit goes to buy our uniforms, equipment, our firearms, our training, our ammunition to train and send people to the police academy. Once you take away that funding where’s the money going to come from?”

It’s the revenue.  Don’t worry about slimming down and perhaps NOT buying those brand new Dodge Chargers and fancy comms gear.  Or perhaps laying off those unnecessary workers.  No, the pistol permit fee is a good way to raise money.

Other CLEOs have said the same thing as I’ve noted.

But opponents said it would have serious financial consequences for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, which administers firearms licenses issued under the Oklahoma Self Defense Act.

A fiscal analysis performed for the House indicates the measure would reduce OSBI’s revenue by at least $6 million and would lead to the loss of jobs and reduced operating expenses at the agency.

The reduction in revenue would be because firearms owners would no longer seek concealed carry licenses – which cost $100 for initial 5-year license and $200 for 10 years – if they could carry a gun openly without a license. There are now more than 238,300 Oklahomans with active licenses to carry handguns, according to state figures.

And regarding the proposed constitutional carry bill in North Carolina, I’ve said that “I suspect that a little truth-telling by North Carolina CLEOs would yield similar results.”

Perhaps it would be a good thing if the tax monies people allocated to your office were tied to the degree to which they see your services as good and needful, delivered in the right way.

What a novel approach.  I wish someone had thought of that before.

Dear John,

Speaking of getting slapped in the face, James Woods owned you.

Sincerely,

All of us

The deep state is putting its players in place and defenestrating the threats.  Regular readers know what we’re talking about when we say the “deep state.”  We don’t mean whatever idiot Bill Kristol thinks it means.  Nor does it mean what this Breitbart author thinks it means.

Those “deep state” officials include the intelligence, law-enforcement and national security officials who worked in President Barack Obama’s administration but who are still working in permanent or temporary positions in the White House and in surrounding agencies. Many of those officials are believed to be leaking information from within the White House to allies in the anti-Trump media, including Kristol.

That’s a children’s bedtime book version of the deep state.  Regular readers know that the deep state means DynCorp, the CIA, portions of the FBI and DHS, much of the State Department, some local LEOs who have previously worked for DynCorp, former generals, The Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative, and some others, involved in money laundering, nation toppling, child and organ trafficking, oil trafficking, weapons trafficking, assassinations, and other wicked things to enrich the already wealthy and bring them more power.

Donald Trump was clearly in a war with the deep state and their mouthpiece, the MSM, during most or all of his presidential campaign.  He has lost the war.

Donald Trump has asked a New York billionaire to conduct a review of U.S. intelligence agencies and other aspects of the federal government, current and former officials told NBC News.

Trump’s expected appointment of Steve Feinberg, co-founder and chief executive of Cerberus Capital Management, is causing consternation inside the intelligence agencies, former senior intelligence officials say.

A senior administration official says Feinberg still needs to be cleared by the Office of Government Ethics, which is complicated because Cerberus owns many different companies, some of which have financial relationships with the U.S. government.

But there were indications Thursday that Trump’s plans could be changing.

Current and former intelligence officials told NBC News that Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana, was annoyed that the news of Feinberg’s role was breaking before Coats’s Senate confirmation, expected next week.

Asked at a White House news conference if Feinberg would conduct an intelligence review, Trump said, “I think that we are going to be able to straighten it out very easily on its own.”

Trump called Feinberg “a very talented man, very successful man,” and said, “he’s offered his services and you know, it’s something we may take advantage of.”

One former official, who speaks regularly to current senior officials, called Feinberg’s expected role an “extra-constitutional process,” and said Trump believes the intelligence community “needs to be threshed and cleaned and bent to the will of the executive.”

It does, and I’ll bet Feinberg “offered his services.”  But this won’t bend the intelligence community to the will of anyone but the deep state.

Folks, Feinberg is DynCorp, DynCorp is the CIA, the State Department is the political wing of the CIA, and through the JTTF and Fusion Centers, the CIA has infiltrated the DHS, FBI and local law enforcement.  DynCorp has been the hinge pin neck deep in nation toppling in North Africa and grabbing of the resources that became available after the nations of Libya and Syria degenerated into chaos.

Trump will be coopted or molded, or intelligence will be completely hidden from him.  Either way, he will be neutered.  The deep state has won.  We always knew that Trump only gave us more time, not a real change.  Make use of that time.  Regular readers know what to do with that time.

As for Cerberus Capital – which Feinberg owns, my previous articles on Cerberus pointed to a bit of puzzlement on why this conglomerate wanted to buy up firearms manufacturers.  At the time I thought it was a bad idea for small firearms companies to sell to conglomerates like Cerberus, and I said so.  But I hadn’t mentally connected the dots between Feinberg and firearms manufacturers.  Well, I have now.

As best as I can tell, Cerberus still owns Remington, Bushmaster, DPMS, Marlin, Para USA and other companies.  At one time, since Para is located near me, I offered to drive to their offices and interview workers, management, or whomever, take some pictures of guns, discuss their gunsmithing and write a post to promote their work.  I was considering buying a Para USA 1911.

The reaction from Para USA was nothing short of creepy and weird.  “No.  We don’t do that.  Please see our web site.”  It was like no communication I’ve ever had with a firearms manufacturer, and I’ve had more than I can count.  Now that I understand Feinberg and his secrecy, it makes better sense.

Readers can make up their own minds about Cerberus, but I won’t be buying any firearms from them (Freedom Group).  It’s my little way of starving the beast since I will be accountable for all of my actions before a sovereign God, but it won’t be enough.  What?  You didn’t think that those hundreds of millions of dollars that supposedly went to train “freedom fighters” in Syria actually went to train “freedom fighters in Syria,” did you?  And you didn’t really think that any of this war against Michael Flynn was accidental, did you?

Keeping up with George Webb is difficult, but a couple of his latest are embedded below.  They touch on some of these things.

We’ve discussed the ridiculous ban on social security beneficiaries that Obama unilaterally declared before leaving office.  We’ve discussed how the ban applied to those who were deemed, according to various MSM reports, “mentally ill, not only that, severely mentally ill, and moreover, disabled and disordered.”

The reality of the matter is much more pedestrian.  These are folks who no longer work and either choose to or have to have someone do their finances for them.  Absent the issue about no longer working, this includes about half of America.

Furthermore, we’ve seen that the issue doesn’t really pertain to mental illness or severe mental illness or disabilities or disorderly anything.  Mental health professionals have weighed in telling us that they cannot bear the burden America wants to place on them (they have no predictive capabilities for propensity to violence), that mental illness has no correspondence to violence, and that even when mentally ill people commit suicide, they don’t usually use a gun.  Read the reports.  I wouldn’t send you to the links if they weren’t so convincing and absolute.  They are uncompromising.  Mental health professionals absolutely do not want this burden and have no capabilities to fulfill that obligation.  Like pagan tribes worshipping witch doctors, we continue to want to know the future, but alas, doctors cannot do that.  Science doesn’t do that.

I thought I had seen just about everything from Daily Kos.  It has been degrading over the past several years, with run-on sentences, misspellings, poor grammar, poor editing and stale ideas.  But this is a new low, even for them.  The House and Senate have rolled back this Obama ban on social security recipients purchasing guns, and how does Kos spin it?

As part of their ongoing efforts to make America less safe, the Republican Party is doing away with one of the few reforms to America’s lunatic gun policies that followed the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Because it’s important, says the Republican Party, that Americans with mental disorders be able to purchase enough guns and ammunition to murder a few classrooms full of our children if they feel like doing that.

The Republican-led Senate voted Wednesday to block an Obama-era regulation that would prevent an estimated 75,000 people with mental disorders from being able to purchase a firearm. The measure now goes to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.

Social security beneficiaries are going to buy guns and go all rogue on us, shooting up people and places and things.  The fact that they haven’t so far is no excuse for lack of regulation, dammit.

Only later do they state the real sweep of the regulation, which was “to collect a list of the 75,000ish people in America who both have a mental disorder and whose Social Security benefits are managed by someone other than themselves because of that impairment, and forwards that list on to the federal background check system. The goal was to screen out those whose condition is so severe that it renders them unable to make their own financial decisions, under the presumption that those people probably should be among those also least capable of making decisions about when or when not to murder people.”

“Condition so severe that it renders them unable to make their own financial decisions.”  “Murder.”  Tough language for the elderly who want means of self defense and yet need a child to assist them with online finances.  I observed at the time that

I seriously doubt the authors of any of these commentaries know anything about the computer they use as a dumb terminal anyway.

Most of them couldn’t code their way through a hand held calculator and are likely only barely able to operate the calculator on their iPhones to multiply two numbers together.  I’d like to see them solve a differential equation, and upon failure perhaps I could cast doubt on their mental readiness to operate a vehicle.

Say, that’s not a bad idea.  How about the author of this article, who conveniently gives us only one name (only cowards do that), meet up and let me give him a math test to see just how mentally competent he is?  I welcome the opportunity, and I’ll even wager a little on the idea that I can give him simple mathematical problems that stump him.

How about it, Hunter?  Care to take the test?  Or perhaps Hunter knows that the real issue has nothing to do with social security beneficiaries, but rather, a trial balloon to see just how far gun grabbing regulations can go with the American people and just what it will take to roll them back.

I love it when people self-identify as statists.  It keeps me from having to do the hard work.

David Codrea:

No matter – when “progressives” are on a roll, what they want is all that matters. Why should the unconstitutional tyranny of imposing prior restraint punishments without due process on male gun owners (especially the evil white ones who belong to NRA and own “assault weapons” with “30 magazine clips” and “shoulder things that go up”) trump feelings?

No matter that “boyfriend” is hardly a fixed legal term, nor is “date.” There’s also the “Hell hath no fury” factor, along with just finding out you’ve let a confused and hostile bipolar head case vampire cross your threshold, and now you just want them out.

Oh, I think she makes good company for Jennifer Mascia.  Two peas in a pod, or birds of a feather.

Matt Bracken sends this along.  Gates of Vienna:

Whence, then, comes the hatred? Left-wing ideology — specifically gender-driven left-wing ideology — is certainly behind a lot of it. The protesters and the media are not so much worried about loss of welfare benefits or any other economic issue as they are about abortion and LGBT ‘rights’ — which they fear will be eroded under Trump. A recent article by Gavin McInnis, entitled “Normalizing Degeneracy” has pointed out that several of the organizers of anti-Trump demonstrations have convictions for pedophile offences. In McInnis’ opinion, these and many others of Trump’s opponents wish to continue the cultural revolution ongoing under the Obama administration, tear down the last vestiges of Christian morality, and legalize all forms of deviance, including pedophilia.

I believe that McInnis is right; that most of the opposition to Trump has nothing whatsoever to do with traditional left-wing concerns, such as working-class poverty, and is almost entirely driven by sexual and sex-related issues. His opponents fear losing the culture-war gains they made under Obama. However, I would suggest that many members of the establishment have, in addition, something very personal to fear from the Trump administration: For it would appear that some of America’s most powerful people have been involved in activities which if brought into the public forum would utterly destroy them, not only professionally, but also personally.

Regular readers know exactly what the deep state is worried about.

Prior: The Strange Case Of Donald Trump And Michael Flynn

NMPolitics.net:

Everytown For Gun Safety — the lobbyist for HB 50 and SB 48 — says private party sales allow felons to buy guns online. The ATF rules are clear here too: Online sellers must ship their guns to a FFL willing to receive them and run a background check on the buyer. That Everytown For Gun Safety found felons trying to buy a gun from one of their fake online ads only means that criminals are criminals. It so happens that those banned from buying a firearm also come into FFL retail outlets fully knowing they will not pass a background check just to see if that FFL would be willing to sell it to them anyway.

The author, Elisabeth Miller, has an impressive CV at the end of the article, and her husband owns Miller Guns & Ammo.  Listen to me my New Mexico friends.  This is part of Bloomberg’s state-to-state strategy to infringe on God-given liberties.

You cannot deal gently with Everytown.  You will get buried.  You must deal with them harshly.  When Everytown folks invaded my back yard, they tried to run with the big dogs and got chewed up by my readers.

That’s what you have to do to these people.  Chew them up.  Make them regret ever targeting New Mexico.  Make them sorry to have ever known you.

I’m not kidding.  They will use Alinsky techniques.  If you’re not prepared for battle, you need to get prepared.  You must savage these people.  Do not talk with them, do not banter with them, do not try to persuade them, do not compromise with them.  Savage them.

Donald Trump stepped on his dick with tungsten cleats today.  It was an unforced error of huge proportions, and it doesn’t bode well for his battle against the deep state in the future.

Oh to be sure, there is no question that Obama and his loyalists have waged a campaign to get rid of Michael Flynn.  His ouster was a political hit job, due in part to the fact that Obama knew that Flynn would bury Obama’s foreign policy legacy, for what it’s worth.  But they could only be as successful as Trump allowed them to be, and only Donald Trump could have fired him, and there is speculation, even early reports, that Reince Priebus was responsible for whispering in Trump’s ear to “fire the bastard.”  The mole inside the Trump administration may in fact be him, or it may be VP Mike Pence.  Who knows at this point?

What we do know is that in order to excise the cancer of the deep state, leadership will be required.  Trump didn’t display that today.  For this failure, he now faces the prospect of ugly Senate investigations of whatever they want, with hysterical calls for someone’s head because shut up and do what we say.  How’s that attention to Obamacare repeal working out, Donald?

In fact, remember the deep state?  You know, the NSA/CIA/FBI campaign, along with DynCorps and the Clinton Global Initiative and the Council on Foreign relations to topple seven countries in North Africa and the Middle East for the purpose of trafficking oil, humans, money and weapons.  Yes, that deep state, the one who ousted Michael Flynn.  How much attention have you and Jeff Sessions paid to that deep state?  You have folks actively working against you and for a shadow government, Donald, and the price for your lack of vision and failure to lead is that all of this attention just got buried in an unnecessary and hysterical witch hunt for a boogeyman.

The charge is that Flynn talked with the Russian ambassador (my God, I hope he did, someone needs to be talking to someone else in representative authority in Russia), and that there was some sort of miscommunication back to the administration about these conversations.  Frankly, I don’t give a shit about the details.  But the deep state does, and here’s why.

The deep state wants war with Russia for a host of reasons, including the fact that war is business model, war buries past sins and keeps them on the back burner so that they’re not investigated, and war opens up vast new frontiers for oil, mineral, precious gems, human trafficking and money trafficking.  The deep state is into all of that, as are most of the Senators.

Furthermore, the U.S. government has a death wish, and apparently wants to flood the country with illegal aliens South of the border to access cheap labor for the corporatists (while the middle class provides their medical care), as well as flood the country with Mohammedans because of whatever reason.  Each ruler has his own religious or monetary reason, moral perfidity or pathological condition for bowing to whose who would abuse them.  For whatever reason, there is also a Muslim invasion in the U.S.

Here is the problem for the progressives and the deep state.  Michael Flynn knows all about the deep state, and he also knows all about Islam and the danger it represents to America.  Just listen for a moment to comments at The Small Wars Journal on an article about Michael Flynn.  The article is irrelevant, but the comments aren’t.  For the record, the SWJ is where the lefty progs hang out who are attached to the military or foreign policy think tanks.  CNAS was good friends with the SWJ, and CNAS is where Obama got one of his loyalists, Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy.  Listen now to someone who calls himself Outlaw, who is anything but an outlaw.

Flynn to a reporter: “Islam, Mike, is a political ideology based on a religion” , at 1:55:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/video/watch/32086541/lt-gen-flynn-islam-is-a-political-ideology-based-on-a-religion/#page1

This article fails to actually indicate that the SecDef ruffled privately the Flynn feathers for actually leaking his document to CNAS……

Notice that the article also does not explain the firing from DIA “for cause” ie poor performance as DDIA……basically an attempt to create an image of a great mover and shaker for change…and to bridge his failures at DIA…..

When’s the last time you saw a Klan leader getting excited by an Attorney General…a DCIA and a NSA appointments?

David Duke must know something we all do not know about the three?????

Wonder if Flynn will reject the joy expressed in his appointment by the KKK?????

here is my beef….

1. Flynn’s anti Islam rhetoric while it pulls with many…does not play well in the entire Sunni and especially Shia ME……
2. Flynn got caught tweeting an anti Semitic tweet out and then when caught at it apologized so is anti Semitism really his core believe…
3. Flynn has fully failed to explain his trips to Moscow and how much he has received from Russian Today and 400% owned Russian propaganda machine
OR how he came to be invited to speak at the FSB/SVR Moscow Headquarters and just who invited him OR his personal ties to Manafort and Page Carter
4. Flynn led the RP Convention chants of “jail her”…to me personally a direct threat to the US Constitution….that supposedly he is now protecting from enemies near and far

Notice the charges.  Not seeing Russia as the “enemy.”  Flynn uses anti-Islam rhetoric.  Flynn led the chants of “jail her.”

If this is the best Outlaw can do, my estimation of Flynn just went sky high.  Flynn knows what’s going on, and he knows the threat posed by the real enemies of America.  Thus he had to go.  Flynn was a wall around Trump that couldn’t be breached, someone who had Trump’s ear, someone who had a history with this stuff.  Someone who had authority.

The other objections are just fabricated problems and intramural squabbles found throughout the military.  Flynn was axed for the same reason Stephen Coughlin was axed.  No one wanted to hear what he had to say.  Coughlin was a scholar and in many ways like “the weeping prophet.”  Flynn was a militarized prophet, and he posed a danger to the deep state.

In the end this can be recovered, and in the end Trump can show the leadership he needs to rid America of its shadow government.  This is not a good beginning.  The press conference he should have given would have gone like this.  Trump walks to the podium and says, “Flynn is my man.  The rest of you can go to hell.”

And that would have been the end of it, focusing all attention back on him and his agenda.  But if Trump continues to listen to mole Reince Priebus or VP Pence or any of this other “advisors,” he might just hear what the deep state has to say rather than what the people have to say.  And in the end, that probably means civil war.