Keep your eye on the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office

It was obvious there’d be more to the story when it was announced that newly elected Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes’ chief of staff Mike Schiller resigned his job after fewer than four months on the job.

The reason?  It’s that reliable “family” fallback again. Schilller who has commuted back and forth from Ohio for years as a “business consultant,” suddenly found the status quo unacceptable, saying the new job kept him from spending time with his wife — causing him to “unexpectedly“ resign. He made sure to announce there was “no animus” between him and Fontes.

Why now?

The answer comes in the form of Matt Morales, appointed the new chief of staff. 

Following the retirement of longtime Elections Director Karen Osborne, Fontes supposedly conducted a nationwide search for a replacement, rather than promoting from within the office that functions in tandem with the Recorder’s Office.

Under the decades long leadership of Republican County Recorder, Helen Purcell, the Elections Director was Democrat Karen Osborne. They worked hand-in-glove, doing their jobs without interjecting a partisan agenda.

That won’t be the case going forward.

Fontes, who intends do away with polling places, has appointed a chief of staff who leaves no doubt as to trend the office is taking, Although Matt Morales ran as a Republican 2016 state House Primary candidate in Legislative District 28, he had no viable footprint in the district and his website lacked an issues page or any information about him, only a vague and rambling statement of his love of Arizona. Morales’ financial contributors were McCain cronies, including beer heiress Cindy Hensley McCain’s Hensley & Co. honchos and lobbyists. He lost.

Now Matt Morales is the new chief of staff at the Recorder’s Office, the office relied upon for overseeing the integrity of the voting system in Maricopa County.

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Pres. Donald Trump wows Atlanta NRA crowd

Declaring he is proud to be the first president to address the NRA since Ronald Reagan in 1983, President Donald Trump told the convention of Second Amendment defenders on Friday, “Your activism helps safeguard our freedoms.”

The NRA’s endorsement of Republican candidate Trump in May 2016 was the earliest in the organization’s history.  He was greeted with appreciative applause and cheers throughout his speech, but they reached a crescendo when he reminded the NRA members, “Only one candidate came to speak to you, and that person is the President of the United States, speaking to you today.”

The National Rifle Association has more than 5 million members. Those in the audience at the Leadership Forum heard President Trump pledge, “No longer will the government come after lawful gun owners.”

Trump reaffirmed his support of the Second Amendment and gun rights during his keynote speech. “You came through for me,” Trump said, referencing the strong support he received from the NRA during the presidential election. “And I am going to come through for you.”

“The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end,” Trump said to enthusiastic cheers. “You have a true friend and champion in the White House.”

“To the NRA, I can proudly say: I will never, ever let you down.”

If you missed the convention coverage, we have it here.

AZ Parents who lost sons to criminal illegals thank Pres. Trump for aid

Cronkite News surprises with the report, “Family members hail opening of office for victims of immigrant crime.” Kudos to ASU student reporter Andres Guerra Luz for the in-depth coverage. Deduct points for mischaracterizing illegal aliens as “immigrants.”

In announcing the opening of the office known as VOICE —  an acronym for Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement — Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly used more accurate language, saying the office “will assist victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens.”

WASHINGTON – A new federal office that will assist victims of crimes committed by immigrants brought “relief and a sense of accomplishment” to parents of Arizona crime victims, on hand Wednesday to witness the opening of the office.

The Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement – or VOICE – office fulfills a pledge by President Donald Trump, who often pointed on the campaign trail to crime survivors like Mary Ann Mendoza and Steve Ronnebeck, whose sons were killed by illegal immigrants in Arizona.

“It feels amazing,” said Ronnebeck, whose son Grant was shot and killed in 2015 during a robbery by an undocumented immigrant. He called the program a “perfect start” toward addressing these crimes that they say for too long have been brushed under the rug.

Immigration advocates have criticized the creation of the office, which they said will further criminalize immigrant communities in this country. Some advocates see the program as a way to justify aggressive enforcement against immigrants, who they said commit crimes at one-third the rate of native-born residents.

But Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, at a ceremony to launch the program, said it will help victims who “are too often ignored. They are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place because the people who victimized them should never have been in our country,” Kelly said.

The program, which will be part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, uses existing agency resources to help crime victims track public information on suspects accused in their crimes and to help answer victims’ questions about the immigration process.

The VOICE office includes 12 call centers staffed by ICE personnel who will direct victims of immigrant crime to resources like the Homeland Security Department’s new Victim Information Notification Exchange, which provides updates on the status of the accused.

But advocates charge that the office paints immigrants “with the brush of collective guilt” and “dehumanizes” them. Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigrant-rights group America’s Voice Education Fund, said in a statement Wednesday that creating the office is “disgusting and dangerous.”“The federal government has set up an entire office dedicated to the proposition that immigrants are uniquely criminal,” Sharry’s statement said. “This is as untrue as it is unfair.”

Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan said that the office was not created because undocumented immigrants necessarily commit more crime than U.S. citizens, but because such crime exists at all.

Mendoza said the office gives victims and their families some place to turn when they are subject to crimes committed by removable immigrants. Her son, Mesa Police Sgt. Brandon Mendoza, was killed in 2014 when a drunken driver on the wrong side of the road hit his car head-on. The driver, who was in the country illegally, had been arrested previously on other criminal charges but was released.

Mendoza said she wrote to then-President Barack Obama, but never got a response. Ronnebeck said his calls to the Obama administration for justice “fell on deaf ears. They didn’t want to hear us, they didn’t want to listen us, and they didn’t really care,” Ronnebeck said.

Both praised Trump for working to help victims and their families. Mendoza said it’s “huge” that the country now has a president “who’s listened to us and who has actually followed through with what he said he was going to do. Now we have somebody who’s going to be actually working for the victim,” she said.

Ronnebeck said he felt “relief and a sense of accomplishment” with the opening of the VOICE office.

“It’s another promise that our president has kept,” he said.

Intrigue follows Ben Toma, appointed to LD 22 AZ House

In the aftermath of state Representative Phil Lovas’ recent resignation from a Legislative District 22 House seat, the elected precinct committeemen of the district nominated three people to fill the vacancy.  The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors made the final pick, selecting Ben Toma. A warm congratulatory message was sent out by AZ GOP chairman Jonathan Lines.

Since the name Ben Toma was unfamiliar, we did a little research and found a litany of items in local newspapers.

In an August 31, 2016 election, Vice Mayor and Mesquite District Council member Bridget Binsbacher was victorious over Peoria City Council challenger Ben Toma, as reported in the Peoria Times.

Toma’s loss might have had something to do with this earlier Sept. 18, 2014 Arizona Republic report that he was being investigated. He was eventually cleared of the charges.  Ben Toma was previously appointed to the Peoria City Council.

The perennial appointee is obviously a man to watch.

 

Leftist Fed. Judge overrides Pres. Trump’s sanctuary city order

Why does Jeff Flake collude with Dems supporting liberal federal judges?

U.S. District Court Judge William H. Orrick on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities refusing to cooperation with immigration enforcement. Last night, the White House released a statement saying, “Once again, a single district judge — this time in San Francisco — has ignored federal immigration law to set a new immigration policy for the entire country.”

During Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign for president, lawyer William H. Orrick III, was a bundler, raising approximately $200,000 for him as well as donating $30,000 of his own money to support Obama’s candidacy.

In a grandiose quid pro quo, Obama nominated William Orrick to a federal judgeship in June 2012, although he was not confirmed until the following February due to a party line vote. Arizona Republicrat Jeff Flake solved Obama’s quandary as he broke with the GOP and voted to confirm liberal Democrat Orrick.

Orrick was not unknown to Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake. He worked at the Department of Justice when the agency filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona and was involved in coordinating the Obama administration’s argument against SB 1070.

A guy right up amnesty supporting Jeff Flake’s alley. 

In 2015, Judge William Orrick issued a temporary restraining order against The Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life group that released undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood. officials and abortionists haggling over lunch for dollar amounts in the sale of aborted  human body parts —- as their wine glasses clinked in the background. One abortionist laughed as she announced her desire  to buy a Lamborghini.

 During his Senate confirmation hearing for a seat on the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, William Orrick promised if confirmed he would never let his political views influence the way he rules on cases.

“My varied legal background is evidence that I will treat all litigants fairly and with respect, and that I will not let my personal views interfere with the administration of justice,” he said. “I have great respect for every type of client I have represented. I have never let my political beliefs affect my legal judgment, and believe that politics have no place in the courtroom.”

When asked what his policy on immigration-related cases would be, Orrick vowed he would recuse himself “from any case that was pending in the Office of Immigration Litigation while I was Deputy Assistant Attorney General and from any other case as required by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges as well as other relevant Canons and statutory provisions.”

With his background, Judge Orrick needs to recuse himself now.

Is Jeff Flake incredibly naive, a fool or a committed Democrat supporter? Flake, it should be remembered, pushed for fast  tracking the confirmation of Obama’s lame duck Democrat nominee Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia. Fortunately, more rational minds prevailed and President Trump’s nominee 10^th Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch was confirmed.

In this instance, Jeff Flake either believed William Orrick‘s slick pledges or agreed with expanding the liberal footprint on the federal bench or decades to come.

Remember in 2016, Jeff Flake took his pre-election show on the network road telling anyone who would listen that he had no intention of voting for the Republican Party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump. That translated to voting for Hillary.

Liberal colluder Jeff Flake worked with John McCain, a pack of dedicated left-wingers, and a couple of RINOs in a repeated effort to orchestrate the Gang of Eight amnesty scheme. Flake is up for reelection in 2018. U.S. Senate terms are six long years. Haven’t we had enough of Flake’s trickery? Support an actual  conservative —  Dr. Kelli Ward for U.S. Senate.  Arizona deserves better than the limp-wristed “representation” we’ve been getting.

“Wilding” ain’t news, taking down Trump is

Arizona Republic’s pathetic* attempt to reverse its death spiral

The Arizona Republic newspaper has long been known as the Periódico de la República de Arizona for its deep commitment to open borders and bonding to amnesty for the illegals invading Arizona — and fanning out to the rest of the U.S. It is also known as the Repugnant and the Repulsive, names given to the disseminator of skewed news, long before we ever heard of fake news. The Daily Regurgitation has become our favorite AKA, since identical stories and accompanying photos appear on consecutive days or even in the same issue. The exact report and photos on the Westward Ho hotel renovations ran Sunday and Monday.

Looking for coverage of the estimated 40 – 60 teen marauders who commandeered a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train Saturday night, robbing and beating passengers — leaving some with face and head injuries? You won’t find it here. The newspaper specializes in disseminating AP feed and USAToday leftward lurches. There is no op-ed page. Opposing views are not welcome.

Instead you’ll be treated to endless bashing of President Trump, routinely and appallingly referred to or depicted in editorial cartoons as Hitler — trivializing the systematic and gruesome murderer of millions. Though the mischaracterization is reprehensible, it’s what they do.

The shocking BART case is eerily similar to what became known as the “wilding” case involving a gang of teens who savagely brutalized a 28-year-old investment banker jogging through Central Park in 1989.  She was left unrecognizable and comatose by her attackers, who assaulted at least nine people during their rampage.

Though they distort the news the newspaper’s execs are savvy enough to understand harsh realities. Its readership is mainly retirees. They won’t be around forever. Insulting the intelligence of readers causes many of them to ditch their subscriptions such as when the newspaper endorsed scandal-plagued liberal Hillary Clinton for president.

Despite the gloom and doom reports from the Arizona Repugnant, the actual barometer of President Trump is American confidence in his policies. They are evidenced in the fact that the stock market continues to soar during his first hundred days, breaking records. This is today’ report.

Hard-copy issues aren’t cost effective. Even the foolish attempts at coolness fall flat.  Case in point was Monday’s main front page headline, “Valley has 99 problems, but triple digits ain’t one.” This accompanied a one paragraph follow-up. With literacy in short supply, it’s a fair bet the newspaper is no longer used as a teaching tool in classrooms.

* According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word “pathetic“ is defined as “unsuccessful, useless or worthless.“ That definition fit’s the state’s largest newspaper to a “T.”

Liberal hypocrite mob emboldened by ability to repress free speech

On occasion we’ve posted columns under the heading, “Weekend reading guaranteed to make you smarter.” They’ve been written by well-respected conservative thinkers who had a message we thought our readers would not only appreciate, but actually benefit from.

Today is Monday.  The weekend is behind us. But the column by Derek Hunter posted on Townhall is definitely worth your time. We hope you‘ll take time to read, “Is Ann Coulter The Last Conservative With Guts?”

Focusing on the left’s repression of speech that disagrees with its own, Hunter highlights not only the withdrawal of an invitation issued to Ann Coulter to speak at UC Berkeley — and her refusal to acquiesce — but also on the removal of prime time stalwart Bill O’Reilly, host of Fox News’ highest rated show The O”Reilly Factor.

Derek Hunter zones in on ground zero as he states: “To the fascistic left, Fox News can’t do right because its existence is wrong. As long as it exists, they will find something to be upset about and demand action on. And advertisers will cave. I don’t know what Bill O’Reilly did or didn’t do,“ he writes,  “but I do know nothing was proven.”

As to the issue of subjugating First Amendment freedoms on campuses that should be bastions of liberty, Hunter writes, “But the Nazi march across publicly funded college campuses to prevent students from inviting conservative speakers is a government issue. It’s a direct, unambiguous violation of the First Amendment. Where’s the outrage? Where are the public statements of condemnation? More importantly, where is the legislation to defund these indoctrination centers?”

Docs with agenda diagnose “patient” they’ve never met

How many of these Trump haters supported lying narcissist Barack Obama?

Sinking to a not previously seen low in psychiatry, over thirty mental health “experts,” not one of whom has ever personally met or examined President Donald Trump, say they have an “ethical responsibility to warn the public” about his “dangerous mental illness.” They jointly conclude the successful businessman is not fit to be president of the United States.

Meeting at a conference at Yale University this past week, the group has drawn harsh criticism from others from within the psychology field for violating the 1973 American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater rule,” which forbids mental health professionals from attempting to diagnose or give professional opinions on someone without having personally examined them.

But that didn‘t stop Dr. John Gartner, who said,“ Worse than just being a liar or a narcissist, in addition, he is paranoid, delusional and grandiose thinking and he proved that to the country the first day he was President. If Donald Trump really believes he had the largest crowd size in history, that’s delusional.” Estimates of crowd size, according to Gartner, provides a reliable barometer of sanity.

It should surprise no one that Gartner is a founder of “Duty to Warn,” an organization of mental health workers who feel Trump is unfit to be president.

Connecticut Republican Party Chairman J.R. Romano responded to the conventioneers calling Trump mentally ill by saying, “This is a sad day. These so-called professionals have thrown ethical standards out the window because they cannot accept the election results.” He also noted that the group is ridiculous and that there is a double standard in how “Duty to Warn” is treating Trump compared to former President Barack Obama.

In response to criticism over his long-distance diagnosis of President Trump, Dr. Gartner said: “This notion that you need to personally interview someone to form a diagnosis actually doesn’t make a whole lotta sense. For one thing, research shows that the psychiatric interview is the least statistical reliable way to make a diagnosis.”

Huh?

Dr Bandy Lee, who organized the conference said, “Dr Gartner was invited as an activist and was not on the actual panel,” emphasizing that the event was “independently organized and did not represent the views of Yale University or Yale School of Medicine.”

“Mom, Dad…about those slaves you owned…..”

Universities foster and elevate victimhood

In today’s zany world, it had to happen. Intending-to-produce-“snowflake“-guilt courses such as the Problem of Whiteness within the African Cultural Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and White Privilege along with courses in Black Lives Matter. As colleges offer monetary scholarship inducements at Sam Houston State University in Texas lunacy has reached its zenith.

Now we read that Students at Western Kentucky University voted in favor of a resolution seeking to provide free tuition to black students as reparations for slavery. The Student Government Association passed this resolution Wednesday by a vote of 19-10, according to this report in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Their parents and other Kentucky taxpayers will be footing the bill for what the coddled students regard as free.

The Civil War ended over a hundred and fifty years ago. President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, halted slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Today, any American with a determination to succeed can work, study, achieve and aided by a wide variety of academic scholarships, complete their education. 

Yet people out-hustle themselves to claim greater victim status. There are countless books on the topic, detailing every conceivable affront.  The very concept of victimization now carries with it an odd measure of prestige. Academia has fostered a nation of victims who revel in their new-found status and exhibit an ambivalence about growing up.

Writing for PJ Media, David Solway’s “snowflake” description is as good as they come:

“Anyone who has followed academic issues since the anti-intellectual 1960s knows that the university is in serious trouble, catering to a professoriate that has bought into the travesty of “social justice” a coercive ideology obsessed with “victim groups.”

The university’s ancestral mission of pursuing truth has been replaced by a species of social engineering and leftist indoctrination. At the same time, it views its mandate as establishing a “safe space” for a student clientele that spends far too much of its time and energy “wringing its hands over pronouns, gluten and microaggressions” (link to Jon Brown at American Thinker) rather than devoting itself to the rigors of study and the acquisition of honest merit. These impoverished souls have come to be known as “snowflakes,” justifiably.”

The victim mentality is a cultural phenomena that looks to blame others for perceived shortcomings. For too many, the long acclaimed sense of personal responsibility has given way to desiring a mantle of inevitable weakness.  Universities stand as a testament to that foolish philosophy.

Recently the students at Notre Dame University protested Vice President Pence, a former Indiana governor and native son, as their commencement speaker, saying his appearance on campus “made them feel unsafe.”

Conservative Ann Coulter has been disinvited to speak at left-wing Berkeley University, where repression of First Amendment freedoms take center stage.

Here are but a few of our recent posts under the heading “academia”

April 17, 2017: Clemson Univ. teaches expecting promptness is racist.

April 10, 2017: Skewed news & rethinking the desirability of a college education

April 1, 2017: NAU educrat docks student’s grade for use of “Mankind”

Dec. 24, 2016: Tucker Carlson eviscerates overindulged, liberal college student

A vile goodbye from a sour Stephen Lemons

Brags about dancing on the graves of conservatives

Stephen Lemons is a columnist for the giveaway Phoenix New Times tabloid. Fitting the definition of a rag, it’s worth exactly what people pay for it.  After years of spewing hatred aimed at conservative elected officials, Lemons is taking his sour tour on the road, moving to Alabama. He describes his new gig this way:

“I’m leaving due to an offer from another outlet, as the grown-ups say, an organization that sues the pants off racists and gives their property to minorities.”

In Lemons’ small-minded, self-loathing world, those who don’t march in lockstep with him qualify as racists.

We are intentionally not posting a link to his farewell column. For most of us, taking a shower at work is not an option, and readers of his column would definitely feel the urge to lather up with a disinfectant.

Lemons is a cockroach who has made a living creeping through dung heaps. If he finds nothing other than his own droppings, he’ll construct something by deadline in order to sensationalize the mundane and satisfy his own decadent interests.

He is fond of flinging words made up by the left to further their causes. “Nativist” gets a workout, as has “birther.” He is not above portraying contrivances as fact.

Stephen Lemons insults a former Arizona governor as a  “pathetic, grizzled, uneducated boob,” saying he looks forward to returning to Arizona to dance on the grave of that still agile and healthy Republican, in the same way he claims he previously did on the tombstone of U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. He finagles the opportunity to refer to the Republican senator who died in 2008, as a racist, but withholds any mention of Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd, who had once been an active member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Hate monger Lemons, routinely decimates former 6-term elected Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and thanks the Phoenix New Times for giving him “carte blanche to wreak as much havoc as possible on the octogenarian autocrat.” Below a cheery photo of himself, Lemons is quoted, “Just the thought of Arpaio being booked makes me smile.”

This is how vermin Stephen Lemons signed off his final column:

“Sometimes, cutting a jig over the corpses of mean-spirited, race-bating troglodytes — once they’ve passed of natural causes — is the best you get in this life. And I’ll take it.”

Nice guy.

He’ll be a real asset to the radical left-wing hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, his new gig in Montgomery Alabama.