Category: random

 

It had to be around 1967 when I first heard his name, only because I remember the grape boycott. Mom thought Cesar Chavez was a hero for shining a light on the plight of migrant farmers in California’s Central Valley, but I couldn’t care less at the time.

Three years later I had to do a book report about Chavez. Looking back, that reader made him seem god-like and the same appears true today as in 2014 President Barack Obama proclaimed March 31 as Cesar Chavez Day.

Since that book report, and setting aside politics, I’ve learned more about him as I recently, I picked up a 1975 copy of “Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa.” Though the information’s limited and vague, I jus’ discovered that he lived in Del Norte for a while, writing:

“By that time Helen and I had two children, Fernando and Sylvia, born a year apart, and Helen was pregnant with Linda. We rented a house from an Aunt in San Jose and started looking for a job. But we just couldn’t find one anywhere. The best we could do was pick string beans, making $1 or $1.50 a day and working only for a few hours because that was all the work there was. Finally the employment office told us they wanted people up in Crescent City, more than four hundred miles to the north.

We didn’t even know where Crescent City was, and we had never done any lumber work but Richard, my cousin Manuel, two other cousins, and I all got in the car and took off.

In the beginning it was very tough because we didn’t know all the tricks working in lumber. We worked so hard the first days that when we came home, we couldn’t eat or do anything. We went right to bed. Even though we were young, the work on the green lumber chain was just killing. Eventually, we learned, and it became easier.

After Richard built a little shack for us, we drove back to San Jose to get our families. Linda was born in Crescent City and so was Richard’s son Freddy.

We stayed about a year and a half, then got tired of all the winter weather. The constant rain was too much, so we returned to San Jose where Richard became an apprentice carpenter, and I got a job as a lumber handler in a mill.”

Evidently, pulling on the green chain kicked their butts – something I can appreciate as the chain moves green lumber along a belt in order for it to be graded and sorted. Employees stand beside the chain and literally ‘pull’ the fresh-cut wood, putting them in sorting piles.

But, in the end, it was Del Norte’s signature weather that became the deciding factor as to whether he would stay or not. I’d love to know what lumber mill he worked for, the shacks location and why I never learn about his connection to Crescent City when I was doing that damned book report.

Its official – Rick Perry has tossed his Stetson into the GOP ring for president. He’s the 10th candidate to enter the 2016 race for the White House.

“The world has descended into a chaos of this president’s own making, while his White House loyalists construct an alternative universe where ISIS is contained and Ramadi is merely a setback, where the nature of the enemy can’t be acknowledged for fear of causing offense, where the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, can be trusted to live up to a nuclear agreement,” Perry stated during his announcement.

Twelve years earlier, then-Gov Rick Perry signed agreement with his friend and Muslim leader Aga Khan. Then in April 2004, the Aga Khan Foundation and the University of Texas-Austin (UTA) finalized a grant proposal creating the partnership that became known as the Muslim Histories and Cultures Program (MHC).

MHC recruited and directly trained 80 teachers affecting more than 15 thousand students in ten key Texas districts in 2005 and 2006. The project’s curriculum was initially available for viewing on UTA’s website, but has since been scrubbed from the Internet.

Islam scholar Robert Spencer examined the program at the time and concluded, “The curriculum is a complete whitewash and it’s got the endorsement of Perry. It’s not going to give you any idea why people are waging jihad against the West — it’s only going to make you think that the real problem is ‘Islamophobia.’”

This shouldn’t be a surprise as one of the doctrines maintained in Islam is Taqiyya, allowing Muslims to purposefully lie about their true religious beliefs to “unbelievers” and Muslims of different sects. Of course, it is doubtful Texas children will learn any thing about this.

In 2008 he expanded the MHC project and signed off on several Islamic-friendly pieces of legislation, including a consumer protection law ensuring the accurate labeling of food products conforming to Islamic dietary restrictions.

Perry was also instrumental placing Sharia law in the Texas justice system with an Islamic Tribunal operating as a non-profit organization in Dallas, whose website states, “…Muslims here in America are obligated to find a way to solve conflicts and disputes according to the principles of Islamic Law …” adding, “Stoning adulterers, cutting of the hands, polyandry and the like are mainly a part of Islamic Criminal Law.”

We already have an Islamic-enabler in the White House, we don’t need another.

While the national media cheers Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out as ‘a watershed moment in transgender visibility’ — a two-week investigation in Florida came to an end with 22 people arrested after they believed they were going to have sex with children between ages 10 and 14. One of those 22 people includes a Muslim youth coordinator.

Ahmed Saleem is the founder of the Saleem Academy, an organization empowering Muslim youth globally and served as the Orlando coordinator for CAIR, the Counsel On Islamic American Relations. Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said Saleem planned to have sex with a 12-year-old girl, but found himself arrested and charged with felonies ‘for traveling to seduce or solicit a child to commit a sex act.’

The national media is ignoring his arrest for the most part.

Odd how Saleem’s actions fit with ISIL as new evidence reveals how Islamic State buys children as sex slaves and force them into marriage — with girls from Iraq and Syria being stripped, sold, and made to undergo over a dozen ‘virginity reparation’ surgeries. A 2014 United Nation’s report says doctors also perform abortions on pregnant girls as young as nine.

Many of the child victims are from the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq.

ISIL defends its action in an online article with claims of following the Prophet Mohammed – who enslaved and raped non-Muslim women: “Allah has opened the lands for His awliyā’ (supporters), so they entered and dispersed within the lands, killing the fighters of the kuffār (non-Muslims), capturing their women, and enslaving their children.”

“I and those with me at home prostrated to Allah in gratitude on the day the first slave-girl entered our home,” the article concludes.

As ISIL continues to carry out real atrocities against women, on “Game of Thrones” fictional character Sansa Stark gets raped by fictional villain Ramsay Bolton while being watched by fictional character Theon. This prompted Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill to ‘tweet’ that she’s had enough of HBO’s “horrific treatment of women.”

Now, couple McCaskill’s complaint to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and his 1972 ‘rape fantasy essay’ and it becomes obvious that there’s a serious disconnect between what Progressives think is ‘real’ and what’s ‘make believe.’  So far McCaskill hasn’t asked Sanders to explain himself and neither one has called on the Obama Administration to put a halt to ISIL’s continued aggression.

And as further proof of the total dissociation between Progressives and what’s fact and fiction — the man formerly known as ‘Bruce Jenner,’  is starring in her own ‘reality’ show, documenting her ‘new life’ as a transgendered woman.

Satirical news website, “News Examiner,” reports: “After seeing a decline in earnings for the first time in nine years, McDonald’s plans to do something no other restaurant of its kind has ever done before; open a store run entirely by robots.”

“In the end, it will come down to what is best for the shareholders and the customers. The potential employees hoping to make a minimum wage of $15 per hour, maybe not so much,” the lampoon concludes.

While McRobots running a restaurant are fictional, McDonald’s did place 7,000 touch screens throughout its European stores in 2011. And then there’s ‘Momentum Machines’ which has built a robot that “isn’t meant to make employees more efficient. It’s meant to completely obviate them,” according to a 2014 Business Insider report.

The robot can “slice toppings like tomatoes and pickles immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible,” and is “more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce 360 hamburgers per hour.”  In fact, the company’s site boasts that their robot “does everything employees can do, except better.”

Panera Bread plans to introduce self-service ordering kiosks and mobile ordering options to all of its properties by 2017. Meanwhile, Chili’s and Applebee’s has already placed tablets on their tables, letting customers order and pay “without interacting with human wait staff at all.”

These changes are worth considering as Seattle, San Francisco and most recently Los Angeles have adopted a $15 an hour minimum wage, more than double the current federal minimum-wage law of $7.25. Other cities like Chicago, Washington, D.C., and California’s Oakland, have raised their minimum wage as well, though not as much.

In Oakland voters chose to increase the minimum wage from $9 an hour to $12.25 an hour earlier this year. So far at least four restaurants and six grocery stores in the cities’ Chinatown district have closed shop as a result of the increase.

Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law went into effect April 1, 2015, leading to wide-spread closings of restaurants across the city.  And now, California’s Senate has approved raising the state’s required hourly rate to $11 in 2016 and $13 in 2017 and will continue increasing annually starting in 2019 based on inflation.

Progressives aimed the wage increase campaign at fast-food businesses hoping to destroy the industry — but because they don’t believe in ‘American exceptionalism’ they cannot foresee the ‘free market system’ and its response to a ‘manufactured crisis’ and calls for ‘social justice.’

The legal authority for U.S. spy agencies collection of phone records and other data expired after the Senate failed to pass legislation extending the powers. The Senate voted 77-17 to move ahead on a House-passed bill, the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act,” (USA FREEDOM Act) which fell three votes short of the 60 needed to advance in the Senate.

In addition to the bulk phone collections provision, two lesser-known PATRIOT Act provisions also lapsed: one helps track “lone wolf” terrorism suspects unconnected to a foreign power; the second allows the government to eavesdrop on suspects who continually discard their cell phones.

But that program and several other post-Sept. 11 counter-terror measures look likely to be revived in a matter of days. Rebooting the phone collections program would take about a day.

With no other options, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is embracing a House-passed bill that would extend the anti-terror provisions, while also remaking the bulk phone collections program. The FBI’s use of the PATRIOT Act to collect hotel, travel, credit card, banking and other business records in national security investigations would also be extended under the House bill.

The House bill extends those two provisions unchanged, while remaking the bulk collection program so that the National Security Agency (NSA) would stop collecting the phone records after a six month transition period, but would be authorized under court order to search records held by phone companies.

After debate pitting Americans’ distrust of intrusive government against fears of terrorist attacks, the Senate voted to move ahead with reform legislation that would replace the bulk phone records program revealed two years ago by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It’s being considered a victory by President Obama, who pushed hard for Congress to advance the reform measure.

Under the USA FREEDOM Act telephone records would be held by telecommunications companies, not the government, and the NSA would have to get court approval to gain access to specific data. Neither the current or proposed new system supposedly gives the federal government access to the content of phone conversations.

However, collecting massive amounts of data isn’t what halts terror attacks. It’s the ability of agencies to communicate with one another.

From 1998 to 2001, the Army Intelligence and Special Operations Command (AISOC) conducted an intelligence-gathering endeavor known as Able Danger. Its mission was to investigate the terrorist threat posed by al Qaeda, both inside the U.S. and abroad.

Able Danger identified, by name, four of the future 9/11 hijackers — including the ringleader, Mohammed Atta – as members of an al Qaeda cell based in Brooklyn, New York. But the AISOC couldn’t inform the FBI about the activities of these suspects, leaving them free to continue plotting and preparing for the 9/11 attacks.

That’s because, under the Clinton administration, a policy preventing the agencies from sharing intelligence was enacted. In fact, Clinton deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick is responsible for creating this “wall” that restricted information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies before the attacks.

Unfortunately, in protecting Clinton’s legacy, many Progressives point to the same style of “wall” blocking communications, going back to the Carter administration’s 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was enacted to defuse allegations of FBI espionage abuses.

However, Gorelick penned her memo when the FBI and CIA were investigating illegal Chinese contributions that had been made to Clinton’s presidential campaign. Both agencies were finding evidence damaging to the Democratic Party, its fundraisers, the Chinese, and ultimately the Clinton administration itself.

Communications between federal agencies is obviously working now, though the means remain unclear to justify the ends.

A good example is the current situation in which former House speaker Denny Hastert finds himself. He’s now indicted for violating regulations on bank withdrawals originally meant to snare drug dealers.

Setting aside anything else Hastert may have done, which is all speculation at this time, he allegedly began by withdrawing $50,000 at a time, but when the activity was questioned by banking officials, he reduced the withdrawals to under $10,000. This caught the attention of financial regulators, who suspected Hastert was trying to evade federal reporting requirements.

Claiming they were concerned Hastert might be the victim of criminal extortion the FBI asked the former speaker about the withdrawals. He claimed that he distrusted banks and still had the cash in his possession, according to the indictment.

All this aside and while parts of the PATRIOT Act are dying, American surveillance will live on.

Section 214 of the PATRIOT Act allows for “pen register/trap and trace,” which will still be used to collect phone and email records. This not only covers the supposed gap in the NSA program but could even expand the government’s current collection program.

And now you know why Obama see’s this so-called ‘lapse’ as a major ‘win.’

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) are changing the existing “navigable waterways” rule, adding a number of bodies of water to their jurisdiction.

Along with lakes, rivers, bays and such, they want control over all standing waters including drainage ditches, overflow reservoirs and mud puddles.  And though the water might be on private property and not for drinking or bathing, the EPA wants the right to inspect those waters.

In announcing the rule, President Obama dripped pure Socialism, “With today’s rule, we take another step towards protecting the waters that belong to all of us.”

The rule change also includes a three percent increase in the land federal government already controls and in which the EPA can enforce the Clean Water Act over. And while the percentage sounds small, it amounts to nearly 777 million acres.

When the EPA first proposed the rules last summer, they did so in open defiance of the Supreme Court’s clear directives which ruled the agency was already at an overreach in their regulatory powers. But last summers actions weren’t the only time the EPA has done this.

In 2001, the Supreme Court held in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County vs. the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the Corps and the EPA couldn’t regulate isolated water bodies because that would void the term “navigable waters” out of the Act and raise constitutional questions.  Despite this, both agencies continued to do so.

This newest rule stems from a 2006 Supreme Court case in which Michigan developer John Rapanos fought an EPA fine for filling in 54 acres of wetlands on land he owned to build a shopping center. The EPA and the Corps argued that the wetlands under the protection of the 1972 Clean Water Act, but the court disagreed.

Ultimately, Rapanos agreed to a nearly $1,000,000 settlement with the EPA while not admitting to any wrongdoing.

The House voted May 12 to overturn the rule, requiring the EPA and Secretary of the Army to withdraw the proposed regulation within 30 days and craft a new one. The Senate was proceeding along a different route to stop the rule with a bill that would overturn the regulation, make the EPA write a new one, setting out specific parameters for the new attempt.

Now, through this new rule, the Obama Administration’s adopted basically the same definition of jurisdictional waters the Supreme Court has rejected twice. It’s also another example of Obama taking executive action without the support of Congress and further eroding the U.S. Constitution.

We were sitting in Hunan’s, a Chinese restaurant in Arcata, California.  At the bottom of the menu, I saw something that puzzled me.

Holding up the menu, I pointed at the words, asking Cathy, “Does ‘no message,’ mean there’s no fortune in the cookies, or something?”

She looked at me, studying my face to see if I was serious. It didn’t take her long to figure out that I was really sincere about what I was asking.

“That doesn’t mean ‘message,’ she responded.

“Yeah,” I argued, “that’s the abbreviation for the word, ‘message.’”

Cathy smiled, “M-S-G means monosodium glutamate, not ‘message.’”

She had to excuse herself from the table for a few minutes in order to regain her composure.  I could not help hearing her in the women’s room, laughing.

The Soccer Cup scandal’s now connected to the Clinton Foundation. In fact, Bill served as the honorary chairman of the U.S. committee that worked unsuccessfully to win the right to host the 2022 World Cup while Qatar, its organizing committee and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) donated between $1.3 million and $5.55 million to the Clinton’s.

FIFA’s $50,000 to $100,000 donation was a membership fee to take part in the annual Clinton Global Initiative event in 2009 and 2010. Shortly afterwards, the FIFA announced it would build 20 community centers in Africa in association with the South African World Cup in 2010.

As for Qatar 2022, a foundation official said the organization was a CGI sponsor in 2013. It remains unclear however, how much of the $250,001 to $500,000 changed hands before December 2010, when Qatar won the rights to host the event.

The government of Qatar, a prominent backer of Hamas, alone gave at least $1,000,000 and maybe as much as $5,000,000. The money, according to the Clinton Foundation website, is for “research and development for sustainable infrastructure at the 2022 FIFA World Cup to improve food security in Qatar, the Middle East, and other arid and water-stressed regions throughout the world.”

Bill traveled to Zürich in 2010, hoping to secure the rights for the U.S. to host the 2022 tournament – however FIFA chose Qatar instead. At a conference the next day, he attributed the decision to FIFA’s wish to “make soccer a world sport.”

The Clinton’s and their so-called philanthropic organization have been under scrutiny since February after learning Bill cashed in on lucrative speeches in exchange for official favors from the State Department, which Hillary ran from 2009 to 2013.

Under Hillary, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation. She also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation.  In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by Hillary have delivered between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Meanwhile, Progressives are more concerned with the fact that Hillary has ties to the company Monsanto and is endorsing genetically modified foods.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s injunction ordering a complete stop to President Obama’s executive order providing amnesty to illegal aliens already in the U.S. The order also puts a stop to ‘delayed deportation,’ saying wasn’t an executive order by Obama, but rather memorandum issued by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson at the president’s direction.

The administration argued that the injunction was unlawful, claiming a single court shouldn’t be able to impose it’s will on a nationwide program implemented by executive order. It also argued that the 26 states suing to stop Obama’s action were not suffering any real damage which gives them standing to sue the federal government.

The court saw it differently: “The district court found that Texas would lose at least $130.89 on each license it issues to a DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents) beneficiary, and the United States does not dispute that calculation on appeal. It is well established that a financial loss generally constitutes an injury so Texas is likely to meet its burden.”

The Obama Administration claims that the hold is a hazard to reforming the immigration system, will damage the economy and worse — is a threat to national security.

“The president’s actions were designed to bring greater accountability to our broken immigration system, grow the economy, and keep our communities safe,” White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said in a statement.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praised the decision in a statement, saying Obama tried to force “a drastic change in immigration policy” and that it’s “a victory for those committed to preserving the rule of law in America.”

“We will continue to fight the brazen lawlessness that has become a trademark of the Obama administration,” he added.

Meanwhile, Obama has shown he doesn’t care what the court ordered, telling a crowd in Miami that “he will move ahead with his executive action on immigration and vowed that his administration will become even more aggressive in the weeks and months to come.”

Recently, it’s been learned that the Obama Administration violated an injunction issued in February by approving about 2,000 amnesties even after the court ordered its halt. Worse yet is the fact that Congress passed an appropriation bill allowing Obama to use taxpayer money to carry out his Executive Order-driven program.

Obama’s lawlessness and Congresses compliance – these are the real the threat to our National Security as both willfully disregard the U.S. Constitution.

“We need the Justice Department to step in and take over policing in this country. In the 20th century, they had to fight states’ rights in, to get the right to vote,” Al Sharpton recently said “We’re going to have to fight states’ rights in terms of closing down police cases.”

This isn’t the first time Sharpton has called for sidestepping of the 10th Amendment.

“States rights has (sic) always been the enemy of civil rights. The idea of the civil rights movement was for the federal government to protect citizens, not leave them alone,” Sharpton said in 2011 during the NAACP State Convention.

The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution delegate’s authority to the people: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Calls for a federal takeover align with earlier comments made by Barack Obama when he was originally running for president in 2008.

“We have got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, and just as well-funded.”

Shortly after Sharpton’s call for a nationalized police force, Obama has decided to end the federal transfers of some combat-style gear to local law enforcement.

“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like there’s an occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” Obama said. “It can alienate and intimidate local residents and send the wrong message.”

This comes after the White House defended the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, in December 2014, which distributed $18 billion worth of military equipment to local police in the past five-years. The program’s authorized by Congress each year.

The Obama administration has continued a move began during the Clinton era to federalize state and local police. Earlier this year Obama introduced a “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” that developed a report that imposes federal standards and state and local police.

Among the report’s recommendations is a call for more police officers, training “on the importance of de-escalation of force,” and “positive non-enforcement activities” to promote police trust like Camden, New Jersey did — “sending an ice cream truck across the city for Mother’s Day treats.”

Meanwhile Operation Jade Helm continues in nine U.S. states through mid-September.