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MAINSTREAM COOLER - For those who believe mainstream contemporary facts.


Sandy Larsen

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Now: Small tortilla shops are being shaken down as Mexican cartels create vast extortion networks, expanding their grip on the economy.

Yikes, what's happened to our neighbor in the South and why aren't we covering this widespread crime state?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/23/mexico-cartels-tortilla-exortion-crime/?location=alert

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12 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Yikes, what's happened to our neighbor in the South and why aren't we covering this widespread crime state?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/23/mexico-cartels-tortilla-exortion-crime/?location=alert

In January 2020, a couple months before the pandemic, I did a record in the south Texas border town of Tomillo, Texas, at this studio: https://sonicranch.com  You could literally see Mexico from the back acre there. Many of the employees at the studio lived in Mexico proper, and the studio owner himself, a native of the area, was well-versed in the history of the cartels. The impression I got from all of them was that the cartels are 100% in charge of everything; that there is no real governing body running Mexico, and that their system has been completely corrupted. Everyone down there, even on the U.S. side, lives in complete fear of cartel members.

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Questions raised over Trump profiting off his Secret Service detail while he campaigns

by Tom Boggioni May 26, 2024

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-proftting-off-secret-service/

 

“In 2022, NBC News reported that a House investigative report showed that the former president was charging as much as $1,185 per night for agents to stay in his hotels, "more than five times the recommended government rate."

On Sunday, Forbes reported now there are now questions about airfare charges for his government-supplied security detail with over $800,000 paid by taxpayers this election cycle and another $361,000 still owed.”


 

You and I are paying for that.

Steve Thomas

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Posted (edited)
18 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

In January 2020, a couple months before the pandemic, I did a record in the south Texas border town of Tomillo, Texas, at this studio: https://sonicranch.com  You could literally see Mexico from the back acre there. Many of the employees at the studio lived in Mexico proper, and the studio owner himself, a native of the area, was well-versed in the history of the cartels. The impression I got from all of them was that the cartels are 100% in charge of everything; that there is no real governing body running Mexico, and that their system has been completely corrupted. Everyone down there, even on the U.S. side, lives in complete fear of cartel members.

There has been a complete breakdown in the rule of law in many Mexican states-- and not only in northern Mexico.

I used to vacation every January in Quintana Roo, for years, but I stopped going down there a few years ago after some cartel guys blew up the ferry to Cozumel (on the dock at Playa del Carmen.)  Tourists have also been killed by cartel shoot outs on the Mayan Riviera.

Here's a story.  I was playing golf at a local Denver course a few years ago, and one of the guys in our foursome was a muscular-looking Mexican guy wearing expensive designer golf clothes and gold chains.  We all chatted, on the tees, and I learned that the guy was from Ciudad Juarez, on "business" in Denver.

I mentioned that I had spent a lot of time in Mexico over the years, but that I had always been afraid to visit Ciudad Juarez, because of reading about the cartel murders and violence there.

He said, "Oh, that's no big deal.  I've seen some guys get executed, but that only happen if guys step out of line."

Our foursome got real quiet after that, and we hardly engaged in further conversation.

Meanwhile, Mexico is experiencing a catastrophic heat wave, and drought, right now, and Mexico City is running out of water!  It's an impending catastrophe for the city of 21 million people!

Mexico City’s water ‘Day Zero’ may come even for the wealthiest residents - The Washington Post

Edited by W. Niederhut
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As if getting publicly booed wasn't bad enough, at the Libertarian nominating convention:

 

"In Sunday's first round of presidential nomination voting, Trump reportedly received just six write-in votes, which amounted to 0.65% of the total delegates."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-libertarian-party-convention/

 

Steve Thomas

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8 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

There has been a complete breakdown in the rule of law in many Mexican states-- and not only in northern Mexico.

I used to vacation every January in Quintana Roo, for years, but I stopped going down there a few years ago after some cartel guys blew up the ferry to Cozumel (on the dock at Playa del Carmen.)  Tourists have also been killed by cartel shoot outs on the Mayan Riviera.

Here's a story.  I was playing golf at a local Denver course a few years ago, and one of the guys in our foursome was a muscular-looking Mexica guy wearing expensive designer golf clothes and gold chains.  We all chatted, on the tees, and I learned that the guy was from Ciudad Juarez, on "business" in Denver.

I mentioned that I had spent a lot of time in Mexico over the years, but that I had always been afraid to visit Ciudad Juarez, because of reading about the cartel murders and violence there.

He said, "Oh, that's no big deal.  I've seen some guys get executed, but that only happen if guys step out of line."

Our foursome got real quiet after that, and we hardly engaged in further conversation.

Meanwhile, Mexico is experiencing a catastrophic heat wave, and drought, right now, and Mexico City is running out of water!  It's an impending catastrophe for the city of 21 million people!

Mexico City’s water ‘Day Zero’ may come even for the wealthiest residents - The Washington Post

Interesting observations, Matt!

***

That is positively creepy, W. !

Do you think it's,

"Cartel been bery bery good to me!?"

*****

It's so discouraging to see what's happened over the years in our hemisphere to all but a few countries to the South.  I do think we could have embraced the JFK vision and helped out more and not left them so far behind. China is now in  position to court them.

In SE Asia, they don't particularly like the Chinese. You can tell the Chinese tourist. It was interesting hearing a Thai tour guide and Chinese tourists trying to communicate to each other in each countries broken English!

One thing I'll say about SE Asia is that those people are on the go. There is a very positive vibe. Like circumstances have left them behind and they now feel the future will be much better. And yet, except for a few big cities, it's not at all a hustle. For example, there's very little theft.

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Posted (edited)

Classic Trump approach to foreign and domestic policy here-- "Give me money and I'll do whatever you want."

Trump recently told Big Oil moguls that he would sabotage clean energy policies for cash.

Trump Pledged to Crush Pro-Palestinian Protests

May 27, 2024 at 10:16 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 

Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, the Washington Post reports.

Said Trump: “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”

Edited by W. Niederhut
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R.I.P. Doug Ingle-- age 78.  Best known for his overplayed, often-ridiculed psychedelic rock hit, In-a-Gadda-da-Vida, Ingle actually wrote some ingenious songs, IMO.  I still listen to his 1969 Iron Butterfly Ball album.

Doug Ingle lived in Evergreen, Colorado in his boyhood before the family moved to San Diego.

His father eked out a meager living as a church organist, and Ingle later used his childhood musical education to write songs, play the organ, and sing for his psychedelic rock band, Iron Butterfly.

He was a talented organist who wrote and chanted rock songs in a distinctly Gregorian style.

You can tell that he grew up listening to Gregorian-style chanting and virtuoso organ music in the Anglican church.

 

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This is coming from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James Risen.

Risen worked for the LA Times and NYT before joining Jeremy Scahill and the staff of The Intercept.

The Media Still Doesn’t Grasp the Danger of Trump (theintercept.com)

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