CALIFORNIA MUSINGS .

"Sanctuary State" 

California is heading to a downward spiral ,  after declaring it a "Sanctuary State" , this declaration is sending a vary wrong message .→ It sends the message that the state has "open borders" , that anyone crossing the border will not be prosecuted . These  Our Democrats would  like to make California a “sanctuary state,” setting up a confrontation with the federal government over fundamental questions of who gets to enter the country, who gets to stay and how the rules will be enforced.   The California sanctuary bill does set up a confrontation with the Trump administration, but not with any Federal law. Trump has consistently lost when he has tried to impose a penalty for not holding people beyond their time in jail or in prison merely on the whim of ICE. Holding someone without just cause is illegal and most jailers know this. They don't want the liability. ICE could assume the liability, but has not. ICE could get warrants that would give them the legal power to hold someone, but generally does not.   I believe in "legal" immigrant rights , those who want to get in legally .  I am against  creating a zone to protect "criminal illegals" at the same  time while  (1)>>it singles out a certain group of "illegals" while deporting others . (2)>>Nothing in the California move reflects true immigration reform .  Another problem, They say there's 49,000 people living here illegally... wow... right there is the solution to the local housing problem... And 4,100 kids in school...  there's the solution to our overcrowded schools and the cost over runs to educate illegal alien kids.  (3)> California is having a housing crisis right now.  Just who get the free housing ? There will be millions more of people to feed , house , school . Its at the expense of the California tax payer who gets sucked into paying more taxes . The California bill would just withhold cooperation, and there are so many undocumented aliens living in California that ICE doesn’t need help to find them. According to the PEW Research Center, California had 2,350,000 undocumented aliens in 2014.  It had more undocumented aliens than any other state, which can be attributed in part to California’s sanctuary policies. To the extent that sanctuary practices draw undocumented aliens to a city or state, it makes it easier for ICE to find them. Its a politically based motive against Washington D.C. , Trump administration . 
Legal Marijuana .

It FINALLY HAPPENED . Marijuana has become Legal in the California . While everyone thought it was going to be easy , the legalization thing hit a drywall. Attorney General Jeff Sessions for pushing federal prosecutors – against all logic and reason – to crack down on marijuana in California and other states where it’s legal. While many of some Republicans , Democrats are angry at Sessions saying that is his move is going to roll back on Eric Holder's memo on Marijuana .It looks that Sessions went over Mr. Trump's stance on "letting the states decide" . So let me explain. I have to point out a few things while studying the issue of Marijuana's legality . (3.2)>>Personally I feel that the plant has a number of medical uses.  I also think that the recreational use , like alcohol is dangerous .  Problem is people get stupid and mix it with other substances.  I  am also against the draconian laws that have been levied against the Cannabis plant. For along time the FEDs have been beating down on people using it ,  while  at the same time substituting Tobacco as a alternative legal drug to the masses.    Cannabis like its cousin Tobacco are both plants that  drugs are created from them  , one is legal and the other is not . It made no sense anyway . But Sessions did not go against Trump , its a misunderstanding  that is playing out in the news media , a understatement . Sessions did have the green light to issue his memo  from Trump . I  heard that Trump is taking a hard line on drugs crossing the border . This move by Sessions is right out of Trump's rather confusing politics . Second , (4)>>the Democratic Party has been mostly responsible for maintaining  a war against Marijuana legalization . Regardless of the Holder Memo during the eight years of Obama Administration , going back to the Clinton years . The Democratic leadership took a hard stance against Marijuana , the most draconian period of Marijuana arrests" tough on crime" attitude against "weed" was during the Clinton administration . So President Obama could have way back in 2009 could have ended the war on Drugs , but he was up in the spot light , along with the most liberal looking Democrats { Boxer & Pelosi } flip flopping on the subject . Hypocrisy has been center to the war on this drug .  Now its legal in some states I see new challenge  ahead . The war on this "plant" may come at the expanse of a new civil war .

"Fire and Fury".

Not about California . I though I'd write about Michael Wolff's new tell all book on the chaotic Trump administrations first year . This book has really profound revelations . It reveals FIRST OF ALL  a vary dysfunctional leadership . You & I probably guessed that President Trump's first few months saw a bunch of his inner circle just vanish . Most Particular would alt-right Steve Bannon who exited, criticized Trump calling upon his mental state in question . The book infuriated Mr. Trump in part by quoting Mr. Bannon making derogatory comments about the president’s children. Mr. Bannon was quoted as saying that Donald Trump Jr. had been “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for meeting with Russians during the 2016 campaign and that Ivanka Trump was “dumb as a brick.” Mr. Trump fired back on Wednesday, saying that Mr. Bannon had “lost his mind” and had “nothing to do with me or my presidency.” Mr. Bannon, who had stayed in touch with Mr. Trump sporadically after being pushed out of the White House last summer, sought to smooth over the rift during his Breitbart News radio show on Wednesday night. What ties all of (5)>>this gossipy stuff together is a central thesis: that Trump is singularly unqualified to be president, and everyone around him knows it. It’s a classic story: The emperor has no clothes. The problem is that we already knew this from less salacious reporting extending back years. Wolff’s main contribution to what we know about Trump is a willingness to seemingly say anything, whether or not it’s strictly true—and that only bolsters the Trump administration’s case that the fake news media is out to get him. However, Wolff said Friday on NBC’s “Today” show that he had talked to the president for the book. “I absolutely spoke to the president. Whether he realized it was an interview or not, I don’t know, but it was certainly not off the record,” he said. He said he spent about three total hours talking with the president.Wolff says the book is mostly based on talks with people who have worked closely with the president. He said he has records and notes from about 200 interviews with people connected to the Trump campaign or Trump White House. Wolff has confirmed he has audio recordings of some of those talks. I am going to reserve my copy . 

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>it singles out a certain group of "illegals" while deporting others .AN  often-overlooked demographic: one of an estimated 1.5 million Asian immigrants in the U.S. illegally, the second largest group after immigrants from Mexico and Central America. There are about 416,000 Asians without legal status in California. Yet in part because illegal immigration has been cast largely as a Latino issue, Asians tend to be overlooked in the national discourse.   (2)>>Nothing in the California move reflects true immigration reform . On Jan. 1, California enacted Senate Bill 54, a measure passed last year that limits how law enforcement agencies can interact with federal immigration authorities – the topic of Homan’s television appearance. Cities like Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles already had policies in place that limited law enforcement cooperation with immigration authorities, and the ICE director singled out local and state leaders of sanctuary locales as accountable for crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their areas. According to 8 U.S. Code § 1325, entry into the United States at points other than those designated and evading an immigration official is a crime punishable by up to two-years imprisonment. However, once here, there status is underdetermined. It is possible and happens daily that people who enter illegally then obtain legal status. One can break a law to prevent a greater wrong, the “necessity defense." Thus, someone who fled for their own safety from some country to the US could be awarded legal status here. People who have not been reviewed, because they avoided interaction with the immigration authorities, do not yet have a status. Under the legal theory of innocent until proven guilty, those here without status are "undocumented" because there hasn't been a determination they are here illegally yet.   (3)> California is having a housing crisis right now. The state estimates that it needs to build 180,000 homes annually just to keep up with projected population growth and keep prices from escalating further out of control.Unfortunately, for the past 10 years, the state has averaged less than half of that. In no year during that span did California crack the 100,000 barrier.There’s fierce debate over how long it takes low-income residents to benefit from the construction of new market-rate housing – a renter on the wait list for housing vouchers won’t take much comfort in the luxury condos being built in downtown Oakland or Los Angeles. While California faces an affordable housing gap at nearly all but the highest income levels, the low-income housing shortage is most severe.According to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, helping just the 1.7 million poorest Californians afford homes would cost $15 to $30 billion a year. The Los Angeles Times estimated that the three marquee bills considered by lawmakers this month would provide less than 25 percent of that total.(3.2)>>Personally I feel that the plant has a number of medical uses.  Medical marijuana is also frequently used to treat nausea induced by chemotherapy, though scientific studies of the smoked form of the plant are limited. ... Two FDA-approved, chemically altered forms of THC, dronabinol and nabilone, have been shown to reduce chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting in cancer patients.  There is also a whole industry that can replace wood , cotton . HEMP which was once part of American agriculture, Another interesting thing about hemp is that it’s carbon negative. In plain English, this means that the plant per se, like any other plant, pulls carbon out of the air, and that the products made with it, like plastic, can then be discarded into a landfill, returning carbon to the soil — anecdotal data and initial research have suggested. There was currently a bill in U.S. Congress that would reclassify hemp from a narcotic to an agricultural crop. If the law were to pass, it would minimize the red tape for established hemp farming programs. (4)>>the Democratic Party has been mostly responsible for maintaining  a war against Marijuana legalization .  As Recently as 2012 , according to Rolling Stone magazine . { see https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obamas-war-on-pot-20120216  } President Obama himself took a hard line against the drug . I quote the above  article , it pretty much sheds light on our flip side government : 

 " Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. "I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," he vowed, promising an end to the Bush administration's high-profile raids on providers of medical pot, which is legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia. But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush's record for medical-marijuana busts. "There's no question that Obama's the worst president on medical marijuana," says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "He's gone from first to worst."

(5)>>this gossipy stuff.  The Right wing wrote so much about attacking the character of Obama while he was in office , it became an industry of books . Likewise Donald Trump is just getting what comes around goes around with the Wolff book .  So in the nest few years I would imagine more such books will be out making salacious accusations .