Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

On the day where Donald Trump visited El Paso, a city grieving over the slaughter of immigrants by a white supremacist terrorist, his regime made it painfully clear as to which side of the immigration debate the federal government is on.

U.S. immigration officials raided numerous Mississippi food processing plants Wednesday, arresting 680 mostly Latino workers in what marked the largest workplace sting in at least a decade.

The raids, planned months ago, happened just hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to visit El Paso, Texas, the majority-Latino city where a man linked to an online screed about a “Hispanic invasion” was charged in a shooting that left 22 people dead in the border city.

Workers filled three buses — two for men and one for women — at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in tiny Morton, 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Jackson. They were taken to a military hangar to be processed for immigration violations. About 70 family, friends and residents waved goodbye and shouted, “Let them go! Let them go!” Later, two more buses arrived.

A tearful 13-year-old boy whose parents are from Guatemala waved goodbye to his mother, a Koch worker, as he stood beside his father. Some employees tried to flee on foot but were captured in the parking lot.

Workers who were confirmed to have legal status were allowed to leave the plant after having their trunks searched.

“It was a sad situation inside,” said Domingo Candelaria, a legal resident and Koch worker who said authorities checked employees’ identification documents.

The company did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

About 600 agents fanned out across the plants involving several companies, surrounding the perimeters to prevent workers from fleeing. They occurred in small towns near Jackson with a workforce made up largely of Latino immigrants, including Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol.

Matthew Albence, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acting director, told The Associated Press that the raids could be the largest such operation thus far in any single state.

Asked to comment on the fact that the raid was happening on the same day as Trump’s El Paso visit, Albence responded, “This is a long-term operation that’s been going on. Our enforcement operations are being done on a racially neutral basis. Investigations are based on evidence.”

And if you believe that the timing is coincidental, that the regime wasn't saving this raid until a day where Trump would need to remind America of the price he plans to extract from undocumented immigrants as a promise to his base in order to rally them, well I have a bridge to sell you running from San Francisco to Hawaii.

Another Day In Gunmerica

A near-tragedy at the headquarters of newspaper USA Today, as Trump's "enemies of the people" rhetoric against the press spawns stochastic terrorism.

USA TODAY's headquarters in McLean, Virginia was being evacuated Wednesday amid a heavy police presence after authorities responded to a report of a man with a weapon at the suburban Washington building.


Alarms sounded inside the building as police squad cars, firetrucks and ambulanes converged on the scene. Law enforcement officers with rifles and body armor were patrolling the area and a helicopter hovered overhead.

The building houses the headquarters of USA TODAY, its parent company, Gannett Co., and offices for a variety of other businesses.

Fairfax County police tweeted around noon that they were responding to reports of a man with a weapon at the building. Officials provided no other details.


Police warned people to avoid the area, which is near the Capital Beltway, major regional malls and office buildings in the Washington suburbs.

The headquarters building houses non-newspaper offices. Hundreds of office workers were herded outside by police.

Workers who fled reported hearing a fire alarm and an announcement over the loudspeaker about an incident inside the building.

"We've been drilled so well in school on this," said Akhil Kota, 21, who works for Appian, a software developer.

Young Millennials and Gen Z have simply accepted that the school mass shooter drills they grew up with will be the workplace mass shooter drills they will live with all their lives.

But I can hear the right now.  "Nobody was hurt, nobody was killed, working as intended."

Why is this intended?

Because the gun lobby makes it so and has for decades.  I guarantee you that your corporate workplace already has a mass shooter plan in place, and that your employer is considering mass shooter drills as more and more of the workforce becomes the people who grew up with this nihilism in school.

Duck and Cover for a new century.  Everyone buy a gun now and protect yourself from the inevitable people with guns!

The number of mass shootings in the last week has prompted many to purchase guns and sign up for classes to earn their license to carry concealed weapons, according to the people who are doing training.

Inside the Laguna Shooting Center, experts offer everything from concealed carry classes to active shooter training. Protocols and practices outlined in the training manuals have changed as the types of mass shooting scenarios change.

Time and time again, we see violent images of horrific shootings. This weekend they came from in El Paso and then Dayton.

“The officers took out the guy as soon as they got there,” said Terry Wingert, an instructor with the Advanced Security Institute.

Wingert, a former police officer, has taught concealed carry classes for 40 years all across California. He teaches up to 300 classes a year, and when a mass shooting happens, inquiries go up 10-15%.

“People will call because they are afraid to go out,” he said.

He and his partner Joe Williams teach the law, civil and criminal liability, and how to use a firearm. The concealed carry classes are 16 hours, spanning about 2 days with several hours on the range and focusing on firearm safety.

In the last few years, they have also offered active shooter training for businesses, churches and private citizens.

“There is classroom training, hands-on training and sometimes we take them in shooting scenarios,” said Wingert.

He also offers an advanced combat stress fire training class.

“Where we put people under stress a number of different ways like having a shooting go on while they are doing it so they get the live sound of it and we have people yelling and screaming,” said Williams.

The concealed carry classes are the most popular. So we asked Sacramentans if they would consider getting their license.

“Yeah, probably, especially in this area,” Julio Lee said.

“I don’t think it’s enough motivation for me to say-preventative measure,” said Denise Lee.

“It was actually a few years ago that we got it because we decided it was something we wanted to do,” Alisha Anson said.

Citizens are taking a step towards securing their own safety. It can take several months to get, but a license to carry is valid for two years in California.

Of course California -- the state with the largest number of registered Republicans in America -- loves concealed carry.

Just another day in Gunmerica.

Doesn't Matter Where You Go Donny, But You Can't Stay Here

Local leaders in both Dayton and El Paso are less than thrilled that Donald Trump is showing up this week to "heal the nation" when everyone freely admits he's making it all worse.

Donald Trump will seek to console the grief-stricken residents of El Paso and Dayton on Wednesday -- a presidential duty he’s never quite mastered and that is made harder by local reluctance about his visit.
The president and first lady Melania Trump will pay tribute to emergency responders in both cities after a pair of weekend shootings left at least 31 people dead and dozens injured. But the visits are complicated both by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric -- blamed by Democrats for helping to incite the El Paso attack -- and his resistance to gun-control measures demanded by local politicians in the aftermath of the shootings.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who is from El Paso, said Trump shouldn’t visit, and the city’s Republican mayor has acknowledged local opposition to the president. Dayton’s mayor, a Democrat, has criticized Trump’s reaction to the shootings, in which he blamed mental illness and video games and refused to endorse proposals such as expanded background checks for gun buyers.

“His comments weren’t very helpful to the issue around guns,” the mayor, Nan Whaley, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “If you just do mental health and don’t do gun work, on common-sense gun legislation, we will not be successful in this fight.”

The U.S. experiences mass shootings at a pace that far exceeds any other developed nation, but Trump’s Republican Party has resisted policies that seek to limit civilian access to firearms. Further complicating Trump’s attempts to soothe the nation, the El Paso attacker posted a racist manifesto online that echoed language the president himself has used in verbal attacks on immigrants and minority members of Congress.

“The president’s the president of all the people, and what he wants to do is go to these communities and grieve with them, pray with them, offer condolences, and quite frankly offer thank you and appreciation to those who are first responders and put their lives on the line and were able to take out the shooter so quickly,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Tuesday.

“He also wants to talk about potential solutions -- how we keep this from ever happening again,” Gidley said.

Gidley said the president is open to considering new legislation, including a background checks bill that passed the House but has not been advanced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Democrats have called on McConnell to bring forward the bill.

Mitch doesn't have the time or inclination for a background check bill that will hand the Senate over to the Democrats as millions of rabid GOP voters turn on him and his Senate GOP colleagues, even if it is the humane thing to do.

Besides, everyone knows the Narcissist-in-Chief is only doing this for the congratulatory news coverage of himself from FOX announcing what a good, good boy he is for not literally taking a steaming dump on the stage and rolling in it.

Meanwhile, Republicans around Trump are in full panic mode as they know this will cost them their offices across the country if they refuse to act, so at the state level, expect bills to at least get a vote.

Well, not in Texas.  Ohio maybe. But you get the picture.

StupidiNews!