BloggeRhythms

Jerry Markon and David Nakamura @washingtonpost.com reported yesterday that the “Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation hundreds of families who have flocked to the United States since the start of last year, according to people familiar with the operation.” 

This would be the first large-scale effort to deport families who have fled violence in Central America. More than 100,000 families of both adults and children have crossed the southwest border since last year. 

While the proposed deportations have been controversial inside the administration, discussed for several months, with DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson pushing for the moves, the pressure for deportations has also mounted because of a recent court decision that ordered DHS to begin releasing families housed in detention centers.

A doubtful Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said,  "I’ll believe it when I see it. What share is this going to be?. . . It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the number they’ve admitted into the country. If you have photogenic raids on a few dozen illegal families and that’s the end of it, it’s just for show. It’s just a [public relations] thing, enforcement theater.”

However, further into the article, the likely real reason for the administration’s change of strategy becomes far clearer, as follows:

“The raids could become a flash point on the 2016 campaign trail, where GOP presidential contenders, including front-runner Donald Trump, have made calls for stricter border control a central issue. Trump’s rise has come as he has promised to deport all undocumented immigrants and bar entry to the United States for Muslim refugees in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., policy prescriptions denounced by Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton.”

So, with an administration more purely driven by a political agenda than any before it, it appears that rising public opinion against illegals is really the cause for them backing off from their goal of totally open borders. Hoping to bring millions of future Democrat voters here.  

Another recurring issue, robotics replacing humans to protect against rising payroll costs came up today. For the first time, a Chinese news channel has employed an artificial intelligence robot as a weather reporter on its live breakfast show.

An article @economictimes.indiatimes.com, says, robotics progress is “raising concerns among the country's journalists as it could threaten their jobs. 

Robot XiaoIce said during her debut on Tuesday morning, “I'm happy to start my new work on the winter solstice,” although XiaoIce is actually software developed by Microsoft using smart cloud and big data. In her first two days of her work, “XiaoIce impressed many with her cute voice. She also comments on big news events on Shanghai Dragon TV.” 

 

“According to Microsoft, breakthroughs in text-to-speech artificial intelligence (AI) have helped XiaoIce score high points for linguistic naturalness, and hers is closer to the human voice than other speech synthesizers. Through unique emotional technology, she can make comments instantly based on weather data."

What’s truly most ironic though, is the aspect of people worrying that XiaoIce could cause traditional TV anchors and weather reporters to lose their jobs. Because, if one step further is taken, where a completely independent, intelligent, articulate woman is developed, it becomes very possible to replace one of the costliest humans on earth with a better model. And that could turn out to be Bill Clinton’s wife, one of the drivers of higher employment costs and wages that employers, and the nation, can’t afford. 

And then, yesterday on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Charles Krauthammer said “that despite confirmation by the Ben Carson camp that its team will make personnel changes, the real problem for the campaign is Carson himself.

“His problem is not staff, I'm not sure it's organization, yes, he's collected a lot of money and gone through a ton of it with little result. The problem is the candidate. The problem is once we had the Paris attack and the attack here in the United States, it became an election dominated by terrorism… That’s not his strong suit to say the least.” 

While going on to say Carson has “fallen like a stone,” expressing skepticism the candidate can recover, Krauthammer didn’t go far enough. Because while Carson certainly hasn’t the skills or experience to handle the nation’s wartime foreign policy, neither has Trump, Cruz, Rubio or certainly, Paul. 

The closest that Republicans can come to qualified leadership are Bush, Christie, Kasich, Huckabee and even Pataki. As former governors, at least they oversaw National Guards. 

 

Presenting another excellent idea, a friend posted this on FB this morning. 

 

 Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.

It appears that aside from the East Coast weather, things are heating up for Bryan Pagliano, the former staffer who set up the controversial private email server in the Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y. 

More than three months after invoking his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying before the House committee investigating the Benghazi terrorist attack, Pagliano’s now at the center of a separate and ongoing investigation by the FBI into Bill’s wife’s use of a private unsecured server while she was secretary of state. 

He’s not been charged with any crime, but according to FoxNews.com, the investigation continues into the private server which contained highly classified information while Bill’s wife was secretary of state. As first reported on Dec. 15, “a review by the intelligence community reaffirmed that at least two emails were “top secret” when they hit Clinton’s private server. The State Department had challenged the classification.” 

“As [also] first reported by The Washington Post, the Clintons paid Pagliano $5,000 for "computer services" prior to his joining the State Department, according to a financial disclosure form he filed in April 2009. Yet, even after arriving at State in May 2009, Pagliano continued to be paid by the Clintons to maintain the non-secure homebrew server, which was located in a bathroom closet inside the Clinton's Chappaqua home.” 

What’s quite interesting, and seemingly very consistent is that, “[a]s part of invoking his Fifth Amendment right, Pagliano is also invoking the so-called act-of-production privilege. Since 1984, according to a review by Fox News, the privilege has been used in 103 federal or state cases. One of which may predict history repeating itself.

“The privilege has been invoked before by a Clinton associate. Webb Hubbell, Hillary Clinton's former law partner when she worked at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas, argued for an "act-of-production privilege" during the federal investigation into the collapse of Madison Guaranty, a failed savings and loan. Hubbell followed Bill and Hillary Clinton into the White House to become an associate attorney general, the third-ranking member of the Justice Department. He was convicted in 1995 and served 18 months in federal prison for his role in the failure of that savings and loan which later became known as the "Whitewater scandal."

“In addition to looking at the potential mishandling of classified material, investigators are focused on possible violations of U.S. Code 18, Section 1001 pertaining to “materially false” statements given either in writing, orally or through a third party. Each violation is subject to five years in prison.”

Since the story appears on Christmas Eve, perhaps Santa is somehow involved in this chain of events, and might be giving the nation one of the best presents ever. By setting the stage for Clinton’s and their cohorts convictions.

Which brings up the ongoing question:  Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you guys reading this?  

That's it for today folks.

Adios