A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!
I was all packed and ready to go, my primary care Doctor at SRS had released me, all tests completed and passed (and there was a battery of them), zoom class attended and physical therapy arranged...but at 2:00 this afternoonreceived a phone call from the surgeon's office that surgery would be delayed.
I have to wait another three months and take another A1C test. It appears as though the taking me completely off glimiperide and lowering my insulin since last June drastically affected the A1C results.
I cried all afternoon this has been such a bummer and it is not resolved. The best thing to lower A1C results is exercise, but shit, I can't even walk. So, going back on the voltaren for pain, going back on on the glimiperide and insulin will be increased. Testing again June.
The only good news is that Mike said I could get one of those snappy walkers with lights,a horn, brakes, a seat, wheels, a place for your luggage and back support. Some of the newer models from Australia are off road. I have to admit the one I have - the el cheapo one from Walmart which Mike bought - is beyond basic. There are no words to describe how primitive it is. Actually, SRS was supposed to issue me a good walker like they do everyone else and knowing my old cane was not doing the trick & I could barely walk and seeing Doctor after Doctor for nearly three goddamned years did they ? Hell no, that is SRS, it fucking sucks ! Cheap pricks ! Nothing new...still unbelievable I was taken off of glimiperide and insulin lowered since late last year in June by a non-specialist, scary medicine. We are changing providers next season, FAST.
So,if I really do get a new model, I've decided I'm going to practise and get involved in walker racing.
I mean look at these people - they are having a blast:
I mean like I could do that....well, not down here.
Check it out - example of a newer model of walker:
It just started raining again and is supposed to be heavy until dawn. I never remember rains like these. Just by chance I caught the following report - and I have to admit, I was wondering when someone was going to link all this snow and rain here to climate change.
On the report, you can go to the recent study from, "...NASA scientists published Monday in the journal Nature Water found that increasing frequent, widespread and intense droughts and floods were linked more strongly to higher global temperatures than to naturally changing weather patterns like El Nino and La Nina. This suggests these intense events will increase as the climate crisis accelerates, the study says."
First of all, I completely wrenched my bad knee carrying a flat of cat food up the steps...so I'm pretty much down for the count for at least a few days. But this is what we'll be watching around here:
..........
~~~~~
Locally, the executions dropped dramatically this month - which could be explained by the special election held today. How long the Army is going to stay in the region is unknown, but they have been maintaining a very low profile.
~~~~~
UPDATE/edit: (10:27pm) I made it down the steps. This report came in after I did the blog, and apparently it was a wild weekend despite the presence of the military. In Tijuana, nine people executed on Sunday, and five executed on Saturday...so that puts us at 48 executions this month and 466 since the beginning of the year. We'll see how it goes.
~~~~~
Presently, the reports on AMLO's special election turnout caught me off guard. Originally it was thought there would be a heavy turnout. Not so, this is a early result but what the bean counters (INE) say is that eight out of ten Mexican citizens did not vote:
Destacados - Carlos Álvarez- domingo, 10 abril, 2022 8:13 PM
"Between
17 and 18.2 percent of the electoral register - around 15 and 16.8
million citizens - would have voted in the consultation to revoke the
mandate this Sunday, April 10, according to the methodological estimate
of the National Electoral Institute, based on its protocol of sample for
this process.
Based on this calculation, at least eight out of 10 citizens decided not to vote. However,
for said democratic exercise to be binding, it was necessary that 40
percent of the citizens registered in the nominal list of voters vote in
the consultation, that is, 37 million 129 thousand 287 people, of the
universe of 92.8 million voters. .
If this percentage is not reached, the results of the mandate revocation query will have no validity. In
addition, to declare the revocation of the mandate, it is required that
more than half of 40 percent of the total vote vote yes.
If
the revocation of the mandate is not binding, the popular consultation
will have no effect and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will
continue in office until September 2024.
Lorenzo
Córdova Vianello, President Councilor of the INE, also reported that
between 6.4 and 7.8 percent voted for President López Obrador's mandate
to be revoked due to loss of confidence; while between 90 and 91 percent voted for the national president to continue in office. Likewise, null votes had a percentage whose lower limit is 1.6 and the upper limit is 2.1 percent.
According
to data from the National Electoral Institute, 76.3 percent of
compatriots abroad voted for President López Obrador to continue in
office, after the mandate revocation consultation.
In contrast, there were 1,915 votes for the head of the Federal Executive Power to resign due to lack of confidence. The
autonomous constitutional body also revealed that through the
electronic modality, 8 thousand 287 people participated, of which 6
thousand 324 voted for the permanence of President López Obrador in
office, and 48 more annulled their vote.
The
INE detailed that this participation represented 46.53 percent of the
17,809 Mexicans abroad who registered to participate in the citizen
exercise, which will determine whether López Obrador continues in his
mandate.
Despite
these data, Mario Delgado Carrillo, leader of the National Executive
Committee (CEN) of Morena, affirmed that the Tabasco politician "was
scratched", and then blurted out the phrase "have to learn" to his
opponents, describing it as a success the exercise and highlighted that
if all the voting booths had been installed, President López Obrador
would have reached, according to his figures, around 45 million votes.
So, keep an eye on Zeta for the latest, especially the next big hurdle which will be the Electricity Reform and these folks will explain everything - so you get an opportunity to compare what AMLO says and what the underlying mechanics of the situation really are. Check out the older entries too. Amazing.
This is going to be really quick with mostly links - we have been running back and forth to the states, need to go up again tomorrow for knee & blood work, then Friday for my pre-surgury Covid Test, then back for eye surgery, staying overnight in a motel and arrangements for the kitties to stay at Dr. Silva's....wait, I need to scream !
Naturally, Trump is causing chaos; but we knew all along he was going to pull his shit. As you probably already know, today he fired Mark Esper who made it to Trump's shitlist when Esper did not agree to pull out the Military to contain Black Lives Matter protestors in Washington D.C. and around the nation, not to mention Esper agreed to the replacement of Confederate Military statues across the country:
"U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he fired long-embattled Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a tweet on Monday, just two days after news networks called the U.S. election against the incumbent commander in chief, another move that current and former officials worry could upset an already tumultuous transition to a new administration.
The move comes amid lingering tensions between Esper and Trump. The Department of Defense chief’s decision to publicly oppose using active-duty U.S. troops to quell protests against racial injustice in June and his endorsement of renaming military bases that honor Confederate generals angered Trump and nearly led him to push Esper out earlier. Top aides and senior Republican lawmakers helped convince him to keep Esper in place so the administration did not look to be in chaos ahead of the elections, current and former officials said.
Trump tweeted that Christopher Miller, a former Defense Department official recently confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, would take over as acting secretary of defense. Under federal vacancies law, the president can appoint another Senate-confirmed official in place of Esper, who some officials in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill had hoped would remain in place after Trump leaves office to ensure a smooth transfer of power.
“Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” Trump tweeted. The move marks another Trump firing by tweet, after he removed his embattled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by surprise two years ago while the top diplomat was traveling in Africa.
Veteran Pentagon officials reacted to the sudden news with a mixture of shock and anger.
“It’s unprecedented, it’s absolutely crazy,” said Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who spent decades working in the Pentagon. “There’s no practical reason to do this, except for personal vengeance.” A defense official said that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows informed Esper of his termination before Trump tweeted the news.
Townsend said Esper’s firing adds a new layer of uncertainty to what the final months of Trump’s presidency will look like, even as the president refuses to concede his electoral loss: “What it shows us is we don’t know what’s going to happen over the next two months when he begins his transition out of office.”
A Pentagon spokesman referred questions about Esper’s termination to the White House. A White House official said that Miller is eligible to serve in the acting role because he is Senate-confirmed.
The plan comes as officials inside the Pentagon and other agencies have anticipated a spate of potential high-profile firings in the wake of a possible Trump defeat in the November election—some of which have already come to pass. The president is also considering sacking his CIA chief, Gina Haspel, who reportedly fell afoul of the president after she opposed declassifying unverified Russian intelligence alleging Democrats tried to create a scandal about Trump’s ties to Russia ahead of the 2016 elections.
On Friday evening, the White House also forced the resignation of the deputy head of the top U.S. foreign aid agency, U.S. Agency for International Development Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick. Officials familiar with the matter said that she was fired so that the acting head of USAID, John Barsa, could take her deputy job and remain de facto head of the agency to get around time limits for officials serving in interim, acting capacities set by federal vacancy laws.
It was not immediately clear if Capitol Hill got a heads-up before the decision, and top Democrats in Congress were quick to slam Trump’s move. “Dismissing politically appointed national security leaders during a transition is a destabilizing move that will only embolden our adversaries and put our country at greater risk,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat. “President Trump’s decision to fire Secretary Esper out of spite is not just childish, it’s also reckless. It has long been clear that President Trump cares about loyalty above all else, often at the expense of competence, and during a period of presidential transition competence in government is of the utmost importance.”
Some experts said firing officials out of spite, even at the tail end of an administration, could cause blowback.
“You’re trying to have as seamless a transition as possible. Don’t do things that make the system more chaotic,” said Mark Jacobson, the assistant dean for Washington programs at Syracuse University who was a Defense Department official during the transition between Presidents Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s administrations. “Our enemies are going to take note of that, they know that now is a particularly vulnerable time.”
All of that could have a compounding effect on a possible Biden administration’s flexibility to set its own course on Pentagon policy after Inauguration Day. “You don’t want to box them into a corner,” Jacobson added.
Townsend said that Trump officials may also be reluctant to aid in a smooth transition to the next administration, for fear of incurring the White House’s wrath.
“At a time like this, to have [Esper’s] firing happen, it makes the atmosphere even more uneasy. If you are a Trump political appointee and you want to do a good transition, you’re going to pull in your reins and become very conservative because you’re afraid he could do that to you,” he said. “It just makes everyone walk on eggshells.”
As Esper has fallen out of Trump’s good graces, loyalists to the president sitting in high-ranking Defense Department roles have attempted to assert themselves over Pentagon policy.
“They can just do whatever they want,” the former senior Trump official said.
In an exit interview with Military Times, Esper—whom Trump himself had mockingly called “Yesper” for his reputation for upholding the White House line—fatefully mused that he could be replaced by someone much more amenable to the president’s whims, or worse.
“I could have a fight over anything, and I could make it a big fight, and I could live with that —why?” Esper said. “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”
~~~~~
More Slash & Burn by Trump:
He is on a rampage...now fired top scientist Michael Kuperberg, to be replaced by David Legates:
So here's the latest, I'm going to miss what happens tomorrow. through next week What we know for a fact at this point however is that there was no voter fraud, and history will remember Trump as a black stain, full of vitriol and puss. He already is a laughing stock around the free world, although it seems the populists are in his corner. Ah well, birds of a feather flock together.
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The New York County (or Manhattan) District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., has been scrutinizing Donald Trump’s illegalities for some years now, but appears to have been reluctant to lodge charges while Trump was president. The Barr Department of Justice maintains that a sitting president cannot be indicted, though such a policy runs counter to the whole notion that in a republic, the leader is just a first among equals and not a king who rules by divine right. Vance, since he works for New York State, is not bound by DOJ federal rules, but appears not to have wished to get tied up in court over this procedural issue.
Vance no longer has to worry about that problem. Donald Trump will be a private citizen on January 20. Moreover, Trump cannot seek preemptively to pardon himself from a crime brought in a state court, nor could President Biden pardon The Donald for crimes against the state of New York. Only Governor Andrew Cuomo could pardon Trump if he were convicted in state court. What do you think? Would he do it?
The Manhattan District has empaneled a grand jury to consider the proceedings designated Trump v. Vance, 19-cv-08694. The grand jury proceedings are secret, but Manhattan DA Vance has indicated that it is looking into a number of matters, including Trump’s payoff to porn star Stephanie “Stormy Daniels” Clifford, but also “bank, tax and insurance fraud, as well as falsification of business records.”
DA Vance has sought 8 years worth of Trump, Inc. tax returns, and while Trump has fought the subpoena, his challenge has been consistently turned back by several courts. It seems likely that he will now get these records. There is evidence that Trump undervalued his New York properties in order to avoid taxes.
Me, I think the state prosecution of Trump for the Stormy Daniels payoff is the most potentially explosive case, precisely because no pardon could be proffered by President Biden in the genteel tradition of keeping presidents out of jail. Moreover, it would be great legal theater, in a way that dry business or tax fraud would not. I hope the judge allows cameras. Imagine Ms. Clifford’s testimony on national television.
Trump paid Ms. Clifford for sex in 2006 while he was married to Melania. On the eve of the 2016 election he directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, to conclude a non-disclosure agreement with Ms. Clifford for $130,000. Cohen was reimbursed by Trump, Inc. via a dummy corporation Cohen set up for the purpose. It is not clear whether campaign funds were used, but that would be a further illegality. Trump was afraid that Ms. Clifford might reveal the tawdry incident of prostitution by a married man to the press, which might sink his presidential bid if it offended the party’s evangelicals and little old ladies (“blue hairs” in campaign parlance).
If things unfolded in this way, Trump was guilty of election fraud, since he knowingly spent money on a “good” for his campaign and did not report it. Nor were donation limits observed. He could be fined $260,000 and sent to prison for 5 years.
The case would be relatively easy to prove, since the government raided Cohen’s office for records, and Cohen himself is willing to testify.
If Trump were convicted of election law violations for trying to cover up paid-for sex, I think that would do more to hurt Trumpism than anything else. His fanatical followers would be put in the position of trying to deny that Trump had sex with a porn star, or to deny that he illegally paid hush money to cover it up, and that is a hard defense to make among evangelicals, just because it would be hard to talk about these matters. Somewhere along in Trump’s third year in Rikers, my guess is that the sheen would be permanently off him."
Yep.
~~~~~
Sonow neither Jair Bolsonaro or AMLO have congratulated our new President-elect, Joe Biden or Vice-President -elect Kamala Harris on their win. What's up with that...yea, yea, yea, I know I've read that AMLO says he is waiting for authoritative affirmation. Do I have a comment on this behavior? Nope, I cannot comment because I live here. But I think you can guess what I am thinking, no matter what excuses are being made.
This is going to be really quick with mostly links - we have been running back and forth to the states, need to go up again tomorrow for knee & blood work, then Friday for my pre-surgury Covid Test, then back for eye surgery, staying overnight in a motel and arrangements for the kitties to stay at Dr. Silva's....wait, I need to scream !
Naturally, Trump is causing chaos; but we knew all along he was going to pull his shit. As you probably already know, today he fired Mark Esper who made it to Trump's shitlist when Esper did not agree to pull out the Military to contain Black Lives Matter protestors in Washington D.C. and around the nation, not to mention Esper agreed to the replacement of Confederate Military statues across the country:
"U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he fired long-embattled
Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a tweet on Monday, just two days after
news networks called the U.S. election against the incumbent commander
in chief, another move that current and former officials worry could
upset an already tumultuous transition to a new administration.
The move comes amid lingering tensions between Esper and Trump. The
Department of Defense chief’s decision to publicly oppose using
active-duty U.S. troops to quell protests against racial injustice in
June and his endorsement of renaming military bases that honor
Confederate generals angered Trump and nearly led him to push Esper out
earlier. Top aides and senior Republican lawmakers helped convince him
to keep Esper in place so the administration did not look to be in chaos
ahead of the elections, current and former officials said.
Trump tweeted that Christopher Miller, a former Defense Department
official recently confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism
Center, would take over as acting secretary of defense. Under federal
vacancies law, the president can appoint another Senate-confirmed
official in place of Esper, who some officials in the Pentagon and on
Capitol Hill had hoped would remain in place after Trump leaves office
to ensure a smooth transfer of power.
“Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” Trump tweeted.
The move marks another Trump firing by tweet, after he removed his
embattled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by surprise two years ago
while the top diplomat was traveling in Africa.
Veteran Pentagon officials reacted to the sudden news with a mixture of shock and anger.
“It’s unprecedented, it’s absolutely crazy,” said Jim Townsend, a
former deputy assistant secretary of defense who spent decades working
in the Pentagon. “There’s no practical reason to do this, except for
personal vengeance.” A defense official said that White House chief of
staff Mark Meadows informed Esper of his termination before Trump
tweeted the news.
Townsend said Esper’s firing adds a new layer of uncertainty to what
the final months of Trump’s presidency will look like, even as the
president refuses to concede his electoral loss: “What it shows us is we
don’t know what’s going to happen over the next two months when he
begins his transition out of office.”
A Pentagon spokesman referred questions about Esper’s termination to
the White House. A White House official said that Miller is eligible to
serve in the acting role because he is Senate-confirmed.
The plan comes as officials inside the Pentagon and other agencies
have anticipated a spate of potential high-profile firings in the wake
of a possible Trump defeat in the November election—some of which have
already come to pass. The president is also considering sacking his CIA
chief, Gina Haspel, who reportedly fell afoul of the president after she
opposed declassifying
unverified Russian intelligence alleging Democrats tried to create a
scandal about Trump’s ties to Russia ahead of the 2016 elections.
On Friday evening, the White House also forced the resignation of the
deputy head of the top U.S. foreign aid agency, U.S. Agency for
International Development Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick. Officials
familiar with the matter said that she was fired so that the acting head
of USAID, John Barsa, could take her deputy job and remain de facto
head of the agency to get around time limits for officials serving in
interim, acting capacities set by federal vacancy laws.
It was not immediately clear if Capitol Hill got a heads-up before
the decision, and top Democrats in Congress were quick to slam Trump’s
move. “Dismissing politically appointed national security leaders during
a transition is a destabilizing move that will only embolden our
adversaries and put our country at greater risk,” said House Armed
Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat. “President
Trump’s decision to fire Secretary Esper out of spite is not just
childish, it’s also reckless. It has long been clear that President
Trump cares about loyalty above all else, often at the expense of
competence, and during a period of presidential transition competence in
government is of the utmost importance.”
Some experts said firing officials out of spite, even at the tail end of an administration, could cause blowback.
“You’re trying to have as seamless a transition as possible. Don’t do
things that make the system more chaotic,” said Mark Jacobson, the
assistant dean for Washington programs at Syracuse University who was a
Defense Department official during the transition between Presidents
Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s administrations. “Our enemies are
going to take note of that, they know that now is a particularly
vulnerable time.”
All of that could have a compounding effect on a possible Biden
administration’s flexibility to set its own course on Pentagon policy
after Inauguration Day. “You don’t want to box them into a corner,”
Jacobson added.
Townsend said that Trump officials may also be reluctant to aid in a
smooth transition to the next administration, for fear of incurring the
White House’s wrath.
“At a time like this, to have [Esper’s] firing happen, it makes the
atmosphere even more uneasy. If you are a Trump political appointee and
you want to do a good transition, you’re going to pull in your reins and
become very conservative because you’re afraid he could do that to
you,” he said. “It just makes everyone walk on eggshells.”
As Esper has fallen out of Trump’s good graces, loyalists to the
president sitting in high-ranking Defense Department roles have
attempted to assert themselves over Pentagon policy.
“They can just do whatever they want,” the former senior Trump official said.
In an exit interview with Military Times,
Esper—whom Trump himself had mockingly called “Yesper” for his
reputation for upholding the White House line—fatefully mused that he
could be replaced by someone much more amenable to the president’s
whims, or worse.
“I could have a fight over anything, and I could make it a big fight,
and I could live with that —why?” Esper said. “Who’s going to come in
behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”
~~~~~
More Slash & Burn by Trump:
He is on a rampage...now fired top scientist Michael Kuperberg, to be replaced by David Legates:
So here's the latest, I'm going to miss what happens tomorrow. through next week What we know for a fact at this point however is that there was no voter fraud, and history will remember Trump as a black stain, full of vitriol and puss. He already is a laughing stock around the free world, although it seems the populists are in his corner. Ah well, birds of a feather flock together.
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The New York County (or Manhattan)
District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., has been scrutinizing Donald
Trump’s illegalities for some years now, but appears to have been
reluctant to lodge charges while Trump was president. The Barr
Department of Justice maintains that a sitting president cannot be
indicted, though such a policy runs counter to the whole notion that in a
republic, the leader is just a first among equals and not a king who
rules by divine right. Vance, since he works for New York State, is not
bound by DOJ federal rules, but appears not to have wished to get tied
up in court over this procedural issue.
Vance no longer has to worry about that problem. Donald Trump will
be a private citizen on January 20. Moreover, Trump cannot seek
preemptively to pardon himself from a crime brought in a state court,
nor could President Biden pardon The Donald for crimes against the state
of New York. Only Governor Andrew Cuomo could pardon Trump if he were
convicted in state court. What do you think? Would he do it?
The Manhattan District has empaneled a grand jury to consider the
proceedings designated Trump v. Vance, 19-cv-08694. The grand jury
proceedings are secret, but Manhattan DA Vance has indicated that it is looking into a number of matters, including Trump’s payoff to porn star Stephanie “Stormy Daniels” Clifford, but also “bank, tax and insurance fraud, as well as falsification of business records.”
DA Vance has sought 8 years worth of Trump, Inc. tax returns, and
while Trump has fought the subpoena, his challenge has been consistently
turned back by several courts. It seems likely that he will now get
these records. There is evidence that Trump undervalued his New York
properties in order to avoid taxes.
Me, I think the state prosecution of Trump for the Stormy Daniels
payoff is the most potentially explosive case, precisely because no
pardon could be proffered by President Biden in the genteel tradition of
keeping presidents out of jail. Moreover, it would be great legal
theater, in a way that dry business or tax fraud would not. I hope the
judge allows cameras. Imagine Ms. Clifford’s testimony on national
television.
Trump paid Ms. Clifford for sex in 2006 while he was married to
Melania. On the eve of the 2016 election he directed his attorney,
Michael Cohen, to conclude a non-disclosure agreement with Ms. Clifford
for $130,000. Cohen was reimbursed by Trump, Inc. via a dummy
corporation Cohen set up for the purpose. It is not clear whether
campaign funds were used, but that would be a further illegality. Trump
was afraid that Ms. Clifford might reveal the tawdry incident of
prostitution by a married man to the press, which might sink his
presidential bid if it offended the party’s evangelicals and little old
ladies (“blue hairs” in campaign parlance).
If things unfolded in this way, Trump was guilty of election fraud,
since he knowingly spent money on a “good” for his campaign and did not
report it. Nor were donation limits observed. He could be fined
$260,000 and sent to prison for 5 years.
The case would be relatively easy to prove, since the government
raided Cohen’s office for records, and Cohen himself is willing to
testify.
If Trump were convicted of election law violations for trying to
cover up paid-for sex, I think that would do more to hurt Trumpism than
anything else. His fanatical followers would be put in the position of
trying to deny that Trump had sex with a porn star, or to deny that he
illegally paid hush money to cover it up, and that is a hard defense to
make among evangelicals, just because it would be hard to talk about
these matters. Somewhere along in Trump’s third year in Rikers, my
guess is that the sheen would be permanently off him."
Yep.
~~~~~
Sonow neither Jair Bolsonaro or AMLO have congratulated our new President-elect, Joe Biden or Vice-President -elect Kamala Harris on their win. What's up with that...yea, yea, yea, I know I've read that AMLO says he is waiting for authoritative affirmation. Do I have a comment on this behavior? Nope, I cannot comment because I live here. But I think you can guess what I am thinking, no matter what excuses are being made.
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