Joyous Arizona Republicans elect Trump supporter Kelli Ward as new State GOP chair with massive show of support. Finally free of McCain shadow, Arizona Republicans may be allowed to exist, to have a party separate from Democrats-Seeing Red Az

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Losing incumbent Jonathan Lines was a McCain surrogate:
 
1/26/19, “AZ moves right: Kelli Ward wins GOP state chair,” SeeingRedAz.wordpress.com

“Propelled by a massive show of support at Arizona’s Republican statutory day-long Saturday meeting, Dr. Kelli Ward, a Trump-supporting conservative easily secured the party’s top leadership post.

Ward, a physician and former two-term state senator, addressed the jubilant crowd following the announcement of the vote totals. Having traveled the state as a U.S. Senate candidate, she secured a loyal following, trouncing incumbent chairman Jonathan Lines by over a hundred votes cast by elected state committeemen. Doyel Shamley, unknown outside of Navajo County also entered the race, receiving only 65 votes.

Incumbent chairman Lines running for reelection had an uphill battle after presiding over numerous losses of previously held Republican elected offices in the November 2018 election.

Following the vote, a petulant Lines abruptly left the meeting of 1,236 assembled state committeemen who traveled from every statewide county. He reportedly had to be cajoled into returning via a phone call exchange with the previous chairman Robert Graham.

Congressmen Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar and David Schweikert addressed the crowd, as did Congresswoman Debbie Lesko who spoke from D.C. on a video hookup. Newly appointed U.S. Senator [Establishment] Martha McSally, misjudged the crowd as she spoke warmly of the “leadership of Jonathan Lines.”

Gov. Doug Ducey, who also spoke in support of Lines, summed up the feelings of many attendees, with this understatement, “Like you, I was disappointed that we fell short in some of the races.”

Yep.”
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Comments to above: Arizona Republicans eager to unite, free of poisonous John McCain/Jeff Flake Establishment Syndicate are reminded that yes, we do want to unite, but must be aware that cancerous surrogates remain: “State Committeeman” responds (below): “Yes, we do need to come together, but we also need to realize that we have enemies among us. It’s far worse being undermined by a fellow Republican than a Democrat. The word RINO serves a very real purpose in identifying a traitorous backstabber.”

“7 Comments to AZ moves right: Kelli Ward wins GOP state chair:” 

“Mike says: 
January 26, 2019 at 6:08 pm  

Wow – there are actually still some Republicans with brains left in Arizona! What with all the RINO re-elections over the past few years I was beginning to have serious doubts.”

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“Michael Schmitz says:

January 26, 2019 at 6:25 pm

U.S. Senator Martha McSally and Gov. Doug Ducey are out of touch with today’s Republicans now that we have been freed from the McCain factor. May he rest in peace, and may we move forward.”
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“Trevor says:

January 26, 2019 at 6:49 pm  

I was there during the vote the crowd was pumped up for Kelli, she’ll serve our great state well, and also look at Meghan McCain’s tweet it is hilarious!”

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“PC/SC says:

January 26, 2019 at 7:06 pm

When the motion was made to hold a roll call vote for Chairman rather than voting by cell phones, many in the room voiced that UNITY was at stake, and it appeared to be a thinly-veiled threat that if the assemblage failed to allow the “establishment” to count the votes, the AZGOP would splinter, and fall apart.

Now that the roll-call vote was taken, and Ms Ward won, it is time for those who did not vote for her to “walk the walk” and make sure that the “unity” they clamored about comes to pass.

We WILL be watching!!”
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“Ellsworth says:

January 26, 2019 at 7:52 pm

It was clear to me and other state committeemen I spoke with today that the reason behind the “clamor” for a roll call vote was extreme distrust of the establishment’s fingers in the election pie.

We’ve had enough of the McCain/Kyl/Flake shenanigans. They are all history and we supported a roll call vote so that integrity would prevail over slippery antics. The old saying that “power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is as true as it’s ever been.

One anti-roll call speaker took his turn at the microphone and attempted to frighten the delegates by saying it would take “10 or 12 hours” to count the votes. If the votes were counted in the individual districts, it would have taken minutes. He also railed about the need for a “secret vote.” Congress doesn’t vote in secret and neither does anyone wearing a lapel pin sporting a candidates name or driving a car with a political bumper sticker, Most of us are proud of the candidates and issues we support.”
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“George Moriarty says:

January 26, 2019 at 7:14 pm

Congratulations to Kelli Ward. Now is the time for all Republicans, all factions, all persuasions to see this as a chance to unify and focus on our real opponents–the Democrats. To that end, I hope all of us will stop hurling expletives and casting aspersions (yes, RINO is definitely an aspersion) at each other and join forces. If we don’t, 2020 will likely be a repeat of 2018, and 2022 will be a bloodbath for Republicans. United we . . . ; divided we . . . ! Let’s take advantage of this opportunity and get it right.”
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“State Committeeman says:

January 26, 2019 at 8:36 pm

Yes, we do need to come together, but we also need to realize that we have enemies among us. It’s far worse being undermined by a fellow Republican than a Democrat. The word RINO serves a very real purpose in identifying a traitorous backstabber.”

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Added: One day before the vote for Republican chair in Arizona:

1/25/19, “McCain’s corruption still haunts AZ GOP in advance of state meeting,” SeeingRedAz

“As the meeting date approaches, current AZ GOP chairman Jonathan Lines, who oversaw unparalleled Republican losses in November, is shamelessly running for reelection. Two other lesser known men have been campaigning. All of them are linked to the establishment syndicate, with longtime ties to John McCain — and now, his surrogates. Lines was put in place by former chairman, Robert Graham, a slickster still pulling the strings of the chairman, who lives nearly 200 miles away in Yuma, runs a roofing business, parents his 11 children and seldom shows up at the once vibrant Republican headquarters. The phones are rarely answered and messages are returned with the same infrequency.  Pressure has been applied to candidate Frank Thorwald who works with Graham. He is now dutifully falling in line with Lines….

Fortunately, there is an outstanding choice to lead the Arizona Republican Party. Dr. Kelli Ward, a physician and constitutional conservative who served two terms in the state senate. She’s rock solid, has no puppet master and needs no learning curve. Arizona’s political future depends on getting this right.”



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None of Republican Senators on border security conference committee are fans of border security

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Above, 1/25/19, “Not a single Republican who’s strong on border security or with Trump’s base on immigration is on the border security conference committee,” Ryan Girdusky twitter



Above, 1/15/19, “Senators on the border security conference committee," Nate Madden twitter

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Comment: The above four “Republicans” have no interest whatsoever in border security. All Republicans are for open borders but these four are among the biggest America Last cheerleaders.

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft and Newsguard approve of Buzzfeed, “twice selected as a Pulitzer Prize finalist.” Microsoft and Newsguard will be “helping” us with a new blacklisting service to save us from news the War Industry doesn’t like

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“Newsguard” is a well funded imperialist hate group positioning itself and its many partners to censor every word published in the US--under the guise of “fact-checking” and “helping” us avoid fake news. The only “news” will be the narrative of US oligarchs. The underlying belief is that US taxpayers are global slaves who must fund mass murder and the Endless Unwinnable War Industry to include at minimum bombing Russia and “regime change” removal and/or murder of Putin. Newsguard’s neocon advisers include Tom Ridge, Richard Stengel, Ret. Gen. Michael Hayden, among others.

1/24/19, “Microsoft Now Decides if Climate Change News or Other Content is Reliable,” Watts Up With That, Eric Worrall, Guest Essay

“Microsoft have released a plugin for their Edge browser, which uses Newsguard ratings to mark Buzzfeed as reliable, and Breitbart, Drudge and Wikileaks as untrustworthy. At the time of writing they haven’t yet made up their mind about WUWT. 

 

Microsoft Teams with Establishment ‘NewsGuard’ to Create News Blacklist
23 Jan 2019
Allum Bokhari

Without consulting with its users, Microsoft has installed an establishment media browser extension, purportedly designed to rate the accuracy of news websites, as a default extension on mobile versions of its Edge browser. In practice, it creates a news blacklist by warning users away from sites including Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail.

The browser extension, called “Newsguard,” presents users with a red warning label if they navigate to a website that it judges to be unreliable. A “green” rating is given to websites that NewsGuard considers trustworthy.
A number of pro-Trump websites, including Breitbart News, are given a “red” rating by the extension.…

Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/23/microsoft-teams-with-establishment-newsguard-to-create-news-blacklist/

To see this new feature you need to install Edge on your iPhone or Android device, or perhaps use the Edge browser on your Microsoft computer.

For fun I pulled up a few screenshots of the ratings of Buzzfeed, Breitbart and WUWT;





The “reliable” rating for Buzzfeed in my opinion seems a little questionable, given their recent fake news embarrassment.

But the real question in my mind is, if Microsoft tells you web content is reliable, are they liable if you act on the content and suffer harm or loss?”

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Comment: Can Microsoft get its NATO pals to come over and blockade the US southern border since US military isn’t allowed to protect US borders from ongoing invasion?

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58,000 have voted illegally in Texas, 95,000 non-US citizens are registered to vote there-Texas Sec. of State, 1/25/19

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1/25/19, “Secretary Whitley Issues Advisory On Voter Registration List Maintenance Activity,” Texas Secretary of State, Austin, contact Sam Taylor

“Integrity and efficiency of elections in Texas require accuracy of our state’s voter rolls”

“Texas Secretary of State David Whitley today issued an advisory to county voter registrars regarding voter registration list maintenance activities, which include identifying any non-U.S. citizens registered to vote in the State of Texas. For the past year, the Texas Secretary of State’s office has worked closely with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to evaluate information regarding persons identified to not be citizens of the United States.

This voter registration list maintenance activity is being conducted in accordance with federal and state law to ensure that only qualified voters – who must first and foremost be U.S. citizens – are registered to vote in Texas elections.

Through this evaluation, the Texas Secretary of State’s office discovered that a total of approximately 95,000 individuals identified by DPS as non-U.S. citizens have a matching voter registration record in Texas, approximately 58,000 of whom have voted in one or more Texas elections. Voting in an election in which the person knows he or she is not eligible to vote is a second-degree felony in the State of Texas. Upon receipt of this information, the Texas Secretary of State’s office immediately provided the data in its possession to the Texas Attorney General’s office, as the Secretary of State has no statutory enforcement authority to investigate or prosecute alleged illegal activity in connection with an election.

Secretary Whitley issued the following statement:

“Integrity and efficiency of elections in Texas require accuracy of our state’s voter rolls, and my office is committed to using all available tools under the law to maintain an accurate list of registered voters. Our agency has provided extensive training opportunities to county voter registrars so that they can properly perform list maintenance activities in accordance with federal and state law, which affords every registered voter the chance to submit proof of eligibility. I would like to thank the Department of Public Safety for providing us with this valuable information so that we can continue to guarantee the right to vote for all eligible Texas voters, who should not have their voices muted by those who abuse the system.”

Going forward, the Texas Secretary of State’s office will use information it obtains from DPS on a monthly basis to cross-reference with Texas’ statewide voter registration database and match potential non-U.S. citizens who have registered to vote. Once a voter registration is identified as a match, the Texas Secretary of State’s office will notify the county in which the person is registered so that the county voter registrar can take action.

The following combinations of matches between information in DPS-provided data and the statewide voter registration database are used to identify possible non-U.S. citizens registered to vote:

*Last Name, First Name, and Full Social Security Number;
*Last Name, First Name, and DPS-issued Driver License, Personal Identification Card, or Election Identification Certificate Number; or
*Last Name, First Name, Last Four Digits of Social Security Number, and Date of Birth

If a registered voter is identified as a non-U.S. citizen, he or she should receive a Notice of Examination (PDF) from the county voter registrar indicating that his or her registration status is being examined on the grounds that he or she is not a U.S. citizen. The registered voter will then be required to provide proof of citizenship in order to stay registered, which may be done by submitting to the voter registrar a copy of one of the following documents:

*A certified copy of the voter’s birth certificate
*United States passport; or
*Certificate of naturalization (Citizenship certificate)

If the person responds indicating he or she is not a U.S. citizen, or fails to respond to the Notice within 30 days, then the voter registration will be cancelled by the county voter registrar. County voter registrars have been provided with numerous training opportunities to ensure that list maintenance activities are conducted in accordance with state and federal law so as to not affect eligible voters.

Texas voters who wish to check their registration status can visit the Texas Secretary of State’s “Am I Registered?” tool online or contact the voter registrar in their county of registration.”




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Shutdown highlights longtime government delays in modernizing airport security. 18 year TSA experiment in government-run airport security begun in panic after 911 needs to end-IBD Editorial

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1/25/19, “Shutdown Exposes Another Government Agency Ripe For Privatization — Air Traffic Control,” Investors Business Daily Editorial

Air Traffic Control: As the partial government shutdown drags on, the nation’s air traffic controllers warn that it’s putting the safety of air travel at risk. Here’s a solution: Privatize the air traffic control system.

On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced flight delays at several major airports due to staffing shortages among air traffic controllers. That followed a statement released earlier in the week, in which the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, along with pilots’ and flight attendants’ unions, said that “air safety environment … is deteriorating by the day.” 

The statement goes on to say that “we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break.”

Shutdown and Air Travel

We’re not in a position to judge whether the dire warnings of risk are valid, or hyperbole from government workers tired of waiting for their paychecks to show up. Obviously as the shutdown, now in its fifth week, drags on, the strain on various government workers and functions will increase.

The shutdown is clearly starting to have an impact on airport operations. In addition to the delays, Southwest Airlines said Thursday that it will lose up to $15 million this month because of the shutdown’s impact on travel. Delta Air Lines said it will likely lose $25 million.

But all of this raises a question: Why is the nation’s air traffic control system at the mercy of a federal budget standoff at all?

We noted in this space last week that the shutdown exposed why lawmakers should return the TSA back to the private sector.

Similarly, there’s no good reason for the ATC to be a government-run organization. And many reasons why it should the U.S. should follow in the footsteps of several other industrialized nations — including Canada — that have successfully privatized their air traffic control.

Benefits of Privatization

Beyond freeing the ATC from federal government budget battles, it would give the ATC the opportunity to do something it hasn’t been able to do for decades: upgrade its technology, improve its operations, run more efficiently and better manage its workforce.

As it stands, the ATC, like so many other functions of government, is a tangle of waste and mismanagement.

For years the Federal Aviation Administration, which runs the ATC and regulates air safety, has been the subject of blistering audits from the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Transportation’s inspector general.

Cost overruns and delays have plagued the ATC’s efforts to modernize its antiquated equipment. Started in 2004, the FAA’s so-called NextGen project won’t be finished until sometime after 2025. Year after year, its failures have been exposed by devastating audits.

In 2017, the inspector general said basically that the FAA has botched the upgrade, finding, among other things that it “lacked effective management controls.”

At the same time, the ATC has for years suffered a shortage of flight controllers, and received stern warnings that it had to fix its staffing problems.

Last year [2018], the Air Traffic Controllers union complained that the government is losing controllers faster than it can hire new ones. The head of the union said that “we’re at a 30-year low of certified controllers in a system.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Canada Is A Role Model

Take Canada as an example. In 1996, that country moved its air traffic control system from a government agency to a private nonprofit called NavCanada. Unlike the ATC, NavCanada is self-funded, so it isn’t at the mercy of federal budget battles.

As a result, it’s been able to modernize and improve operations. Even the ATC union boss admits that NavCanada is “developing probably the best equipment out there … And they’re doing it in a 30-month to three-year time frame.”

The UK, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland have likewise offloaded their formerly government-run air traffic control systems.

President Donald Trump has been advocating that the U.S. follow in their footsteps since he took office. Unfortunately, the GOP-controlled Congress did nothing.

Will Pelosi Listen To Workers? 

When Trump first broached the subject, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as an attempt to “hand control” of the ATC to “special interests and the big airlines.” 

Then again, maybe she’ll listen to the controllers themselves. Because their troubles won’t end when the government shutdown does.”
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Added: It’s time to end the 18-year TSA experiment begun in panic after 911:

Jan. 2019, “After The Government Shutdown, Privatize The TSA,” Investors Business Daily Editorial

“Failing Screening Tests...

TSA screeners have repeatedly failed to do their one job: prevent passengers from bringing contraband onto planes. 

In 2006, undercover agents were able to get fake bombs past screeners 75% of the time. They were able to do so 96% of the time in a 2015 test. And in 2017, agents were able to beat TSA agents some 80% of the time.

Just this month, a passenger — inadvertently — made it through security at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson with a gun and boarded a plane bound for Tokyo. The agency’s response: “TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed.”

Audits by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general have uncovered vast amounts of waste. In one case, the TSA spent $160 million on body scanners that failed 96% of the time. A congressional investigation found that the agency dumped $44 million on “explosive trace detectors” that it didn’t need.

Conflict of Interest

But the TSA is troublesome for another reason: It both operates and regulates airport security. “From a purely good-government perspective, the TSA has an inherent conflict of interest,” noted the Heritage Foundation’s David Inserra.

Private contractors would be more efficient, more flexible, and more accountable than the TSA. If for no other reason than they risk getting fired. The TSA isn’t ever going to fire itself for incompetence.

The TSA’s sorry record is no doubt why 22 airports around the country have opted to hire their own private screening service, under the oversight of the TSA. These include San Francisco, Kansas City, Key West, Orlando Sanford and Atlantic City International airports. Canada and most of Europe employ private screeners as well, Inserra notes.

It’s time to end the 18-year experiment in government-run airport security. Preferably before the next government shutdown….

TSA Delays Aren’t New

The fact is that on any given day, there will be long lines to get through security at some airports. Anyone who has traveled frequently knows this. Yet the press now treats every line at security checkpoints as examples of the grave harm caused by the government shutdown.

The problem with the TSA isn’t the government shutdown, it’s with the TSA itself.

The agency was created in a panic after 9/11, when officials decided to blame private airport screeners for letting terrorists board planes with box cutters.

So, Congress, with the blessing of President Bush, nationalized airport screening and gave birth to the Transportation Security Administration, which has seen its budget climb more than 41% since 2005.

The result has been little short of a disaster of poor performance and wasteful spending.

A recent Government Accountability Office report found that from 2014 through 2016, the TSA handled 45,153 cases of misconduct by employees.

Nearly half — 22,373 — involved “unexcused or excessive absences or tardiness, absence without leave, failure to follow leave procedures." More than 6,000 involved “screening and security offenses.” Another 2,703 were for things like sexual misconduct, fighting and abusive language. And 2,562 were for “neglect of duty.”

Keep in mind that the TSA employs only about 53,000 people. In other words, each year about a quarter of the TSA’s workforce was under investigation for misconduct. And, in typical government fashion, most of those violations (65%) resulted in nothing more than a sternly worded letter. Only 4% of the misconduct investigations led to any employee getting fired, only 9% resulted in a suspension.”…



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Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee continue to remain mute thus enabling continuous repetition of Russia-Trump conspiracy theories for which no evidence has been provided. “Bipartisanship” means the Republican Party exists only to protect and defend the Democrat and media monopoly-Wall St. Journal, Kimberley Strassel, opinion

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1/24/19, “Mark Warner’s Enablers,” Wall St. Journal, Kimberley A. Strassel, opinion, 1/25 print ed.

“The Virginia senator [Warner] gets too much respect for his Trump-Russia conspiracy theories.”

““Bipartisan” in the Warner dictionary means that committee Democrats make unfounded claims and committee Republicans must sit silent, lest they be accused of uncongeniality. That’s also the media’s definition of bipartisanship, which it daily encourages with a never-ending gush of stories about the committee’s integrity and seriousness.

All this leaves Mr. Warner free to act as the Senate’s resident conspiracy theorist, but with the veneer of respectability—the grown-up version of Rep. Adam Schiff. In recent weeks Mr. Warner has painted the lurid possibility of Trump-Russia collusion. He’s said that Mr. Trump “parroted” President Vladimir Putin’s policies in 2016; that the president “never spoke ill” of Russia; that the Republican Party “softened” its Russia platform; that Mr. Trump hid his Helsinki conversations with Mr. Putin last July.

Where are all the Senate Intelligence Republicans to remind Mr. Warner and his viewers that the committee has failed to produce any “hard evidence” for such claims? They are sitting quietly, the good members who follow the rules and don’t talk about the committee’s work—even as Mr. Warner does.

The situation has also left Mr. Warner free to get away with some unbecoming actions. In March 2017, he began secretly texting with a lobbyist who offered to put him in touch with Mr. Steele. In his texts, Mr. Warner insisted that he alone on the committee should talk to Mr. Steele first, about the “scope” of any possible testimony. He didn’t disclose any of this to his committee colleagues until months later. Who was running interference, and on whose behalf? Not only did Intel Republicans let this pass, a few even defended Mr. Warner.

Republican defenders of the committee say its primary mission was always to investigate the intelligence community’s handling of Russia’s [alleged] 2016 interference—and that it has already issued two reports—one on the community’s assessments, the other on election security.

At some point, however, Republicans might note that Mr. Warner has unilaterally redefined the work of this “bipartisan” group. Recently he told CNN that the “defining question” of the Senate Intel investigation is whether there was “collusion.” The longer he can keep that question open at a leading Senate committee, the longer the innuendo hovers over the White House….

Someone on the Senate Intelligence Committee ought to step up and offer some supervision of Mr. Warner.”




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Why wasn’t the Wall an emergency for two years with Republican majority? Granted, Republicans are more rabidly open borders than Democrats. Wall St. Journal promoted five word Constitutional Amendment: “There shall be open borders,” in 1984

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Above, 1/25/2019, Procrastamom twitter via Ann Coulter twitter
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Added:  7/3/1984-Wall St. Journal calls for open borders. (They don’t mention that their purpose is an endless flow of slave labor)

7/3/1984, “REVIEW and OUTLOOK (Editorial): In Praise of Huddled Masses," Wall St. Journal Editorial Board

“If Washington still wants to “do something” about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders."...

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Comment: WSJ envisions a world of global citizens and no nation states, at least no US. How would a borderless place on a map collect income taxes with a constantly changing population? Who would decide who owes tax and how much they owe? A borderless place on a map has no basis for having a military, so the entire US military would be out of work. “US military” has become an oxymoron anyway since it's not allowed to protect US borders.

 

 


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How exciting. US border is wide open but Colombia was named NATO’s first Latin American global partner in May 2018-Reuters, May 2018…(Neocon Trump leaves US border open but adds to US taxpayer burden of global policing. The pretense that NATO is a North Atlantic alliance is over)

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May 26, 2018, “Colombia to be NATO’s first Latin American global partner,” Reuters, Bogota

“Colombia will next week [May 2018] formally join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, making it the only Latin American nation in the alliance, President Juan Manuel Santos said late on Friday.

Colombia will join as a “global partner”, Santos said, which means it will not necessarily have to take part in military action, and will be fully accredited in Brussels.

The 29-nation NATO alliance reached a partnership agreement with Colombia back in May 2017, just after peace was signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, an agreement that earned Santos a Nobel Peace Prize.

“Colombia benefits a lot from being an active part of the international community, many of the problems we face are increasingly global and need the support and collaboration of other countries for their solution,” Santos said in a televised address.

Other global partners include Afghanistan, Australia, Iraq, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand and Pakistan.

The partnership with Colombia will cooperate on global security areas like cyber and maritime security, terrorism and links to organized crime, according to NATO’s website. 

The announcement came just hours after the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) approved Colombia as a new member. 

“Being part of the OECD and NATO improves the image of Colombia and allows us to have much more play on the international stage,” Santos said.”

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