"Honestly? I Believe She Was Born That Way."

Trump's manner in this clip isn't his normal bombast. He pauses and gives something of a personal aside: "Honestly? I believe she was born that way." He goes on, with clearly deliberate words: "There's something wrong with Kamala, and I just don't know what it is, but there is definitely something missing -- and you know what? Every. Body. Knows it."

Trump isn't mincing words here, he's the classic truthteller, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, James Dean playing Caleb Trask in East of Eden. This reminded me of the much fact-checked claim that Kamala scored a 78 in a Howard University IQ test (click on the image for a larger version):

Even though the fact-checkers insist there's no way to verify this claim, and anyhow she went on to law school and passed the bar exam, two statements ring true: "Then she started laughing like a psychopath. I thought there is no way this bitch graduates."

No way she graduates -- and certainly no way she gets a law degree and passes the bar. But strangely enough, it happened, and she's laughed like a psychopath ever since. But as we come up to the vice presidential debate, it's worth revisiting the thinking in this facebook post from September 12:

This paragraph farther down, I think, is a suggestion of how even the Democrats view Kamala's prospects:

Walz['s] selection shows just how DOA even the other Democrats believe Harris' campaign to be. Of course they will never publicly admit they believe she's going to lose, and likely lose badly, so they will publicly say the opposite, but not a one of them was going to hitch their political futures to what they believe to be a dead horse.

This is exactly what I thought of Walz selection fom the start. I think it's begun to sink in even on Walz himself that he's been seen as a joke fom the start, and this is likely to come out in the debate:

Tim Walz is telling people he’s just as nervous about facing JD Vance as he was the Sunday afternoon in August when he warned Kamala Harris in his running mate interview that he was a bad debater.

Maybe more nervous, according to multiple people who’ve spoken to him.

And the pressure is even higher, when for the first time in modern campaign history, the vice presidential debate Tuesday is likely to be the last marquee event before Election Day. With many voters still saying they don’t know enough about Harris, it could be up to Walz to help convince them to trust a vice president he barely knew himself before she picked him.

Meanwhile,

President Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, will visit Valdosta, Georgia to receive a briefing on the devastation of Hurricane Helene, facilitate the distribution of relief supplies, and deliver remarks to the press on Monday, September 30, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. EDT.

In contrast,

Vice President Kamala Harris is under pressure to visit states ravaged by Hurricane Helene, as former President Donald Trump's campaign has said he plans to visit storm-battered Georgia on Monday.

. . . Trump has been quick to announce his plans to visit storm-ravaged Valdosta in Georgia and has criticized the Biden administration's response to the hurricane, accusing the president of "sleeping" at his beach house.

. . . Harris plans to visit the affected region "as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations," the unnamed official said, per Reuters.

Something's definitely missing.

The Deepest Dive Yet Into The Springfield Haitians

I've at least got to give Reak Ckear Politics some credit for running this piere by Benjamin Roberts, associate editor at something called IM-1776, Heartland Betrayed: Down the Corruption Rabbit Hole: On the ground in Springfield, Ohio. Roberts spent a week in Springfield knocking on doors, talking to residents, and trying to interview local officials. as well as other business and NGO leadership.

The result confirms the picture that's beguin to emerge from my own posts on Springfield, Aurora, and Charleroi:

My investigation discovered a long rotten beam extending from the Mayor down to NGOs, pastors, corporations, and local mediocrities looking to make a fast buck. Everyone is on the take. And Springfield is not an outlier. It is a standard example of local partnerships with federal and corporate resettlement programs working together to profit themselves.

The perverse incentive structures of these institutions makes them incapable of resisting population replacement. The citizens are simply not lucrative enough to leave alone. As things stand, nothing will stop without concerted intervention. The charities, churches, and city officials in Springfield are alien officials ruling over a subject population, robber-barons without charisma or mystique, fishing for pennies in the sewers they have made of their hometowns.

His account sheds more light on local bad actors like Mayor Rob Rue, slumlord George Ten, and sweatshop employer Ross McGregor, but it also makes plain that they're operating within a much larger, shadowy structure of federal and state subsidies. also enabled by churches, including the USCCB, and respectable NGOs like United Way. This will take a lot more investigation:

Federal monies are disbursed through contracts, grants, direct payments, loans and other channels in which entities like the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services are pass-through bodies. Executive Director David Smiddy of the Warder Literacy Center [an NGO] admitted to being funded by this department, but more granular details are hard to determine. Within a labyrinth of organizations, obfuscation is the norm. Ohio Department of Development. Ohio Housing Finance Agency. Springfield Metropolitan Housing Authority. Minority Business Services. Neighborhood Impact Division… The names go on and on. Entities feed into other entities to create a twisted maze.

Roberts brings up the specific question of how the Haitians can get cars, especially when they're often unlicensed and apparently don't know how to drive.

[A] local tow company owner is charting losses of $5,000 a month as a direct result of Haitian crashes. At first glance, one would imagine this to be a boon for his business. However, because Haitians are unlicensed, insurance does not pay out to the owner. Furthermore, almost none of the drivers return to salvage their vehicles, and as a result, due to regulations, tow company lots fill up.

. . . Almost all of the Haitians apparently drive Honda Odysseys. They all bank with PNC, many have cars licensed by Trust Auto, and the most common insurance provider is Acceptance. Who is facilitating this? Who is filing the paperwork and opening these accounts for a community that can’t speak English? So far, I have not been able to uncover much in that direction. It is too peculiar to be assumed to be a coincidence, however.

Another question is who pays the rent on the slum units owned by Mayhor Rue and George Ten:

Rob Rue is the owner of Littleton Properties of Springfield LLC., which owns six rental properties in Springfield. Going door-to-door, I confirmed that at least four of these properties are rented to Haitian migrants. These tenants are not just nuclear families, but multi-generational households including anywhere from ten to fifteen people crammed into one half of a duplex. It is not clear who is paying their rent.

What's been suggested in other reports I've seen is that the slumlords aren't renting by the uinit, as would happen in a conventional lease or tenancy agreement, but they're being paid directly by some outside agency on a per-person basis, which encourages overcrowding as well as encouraging the slumlords to drive out conventional per-unit tenants. Roberts refers to a local pastor and homeless advocate whom he identifies only as Barron:

I interviewed a recently homeless woman, one of many who frequents the soup kitchen and a camp Barron services (comprised almost entirely of recent homeless driven out by rising rents), whose husband holds down a factory job. Her and her friends told me that locals are “pushed out to remodel, rents go from $800 to $1800, and then they move Haitians there.”

A particular problem is the churches, which appear to benefit from federal money for Haitians at the expense of neglecting the native-born poor of the community:

[T]he local government may actually be the least compromised of all the bad actors operating in Springfield. The churches, entrusted to care for their neighbors, have decided to interpret this edict by siding with recent arrivals.

An example is the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a Catholic voluntary organization which issued a press release in response to citizen backlash against their role in the migrant crisis in which they acknowledged that “SVdP volunteers and interpreter[sic]/navigators assist these neighbors [migrants] with tools for independent living. SVdP conduct(s) legal pro-bono immigration clinics. Whenever possible, SVdP navigators help Haitians seek waivers of… application fees.”

Meanwhile a new epidemic of homelessness is emerging as a result of skyrocketing rents, rapacious landlord behavior, and general impoverishment. There are plenty of grandmothers in Springfield who could use a navigator at the DMV, and poor Americans who could use a fee waiver or pro-bono legal assistance, but SVdP has different priorities.

This is clearly an important contribution to coverage of thr quasi-legal immigrant invasion, but it actually provides just a set of pointers for even more detailed investigation.

What About The Haitians In Charleroi. PA?

The odd thing about the Haitians in Temporary Protective Status is that wherever they turn up, there is one standard corporate-media news story. Charleroi, PA, a most unlikely place for this to happen, is another instance, per CBS News:

The influx of immigrants in Charleroi has divided residents over whether or not they are a welcome addition to their community.

Former president Donald Trump put a spotlight on the topic during a rally last week in Arizona, sharing how the population of Haitian migrants in the town had grown by 2,000%.

"Charleroi, what a beautiful name, but it's not so beautiful now," Trump said.

KDKA-TV first reported in March how we were told the immigrant population in Charleroi has grown by more than 2000% in the last two years. The majority of students in the local school district who need assistance learning English are from Haiti. The district has spent $400,000 on ELL teachers and an interpreter. Trump touched on that impact during his speech.

We see all the right notes, Trump stirring up trouble, residents divided, strain on resources, many locals deplorable:

"You can't even walk through the town without being next to them or them pestering you about something," life-long Charleroi resident Raymond Pappas said of the immigrants.

When asked why he had a problem standing next to immigrants, Pappas said, "Well it's not really a problem it's just that they make you feel uncomfortable."

Pappas is not alone in his belief. Off-camera, a number of neighbors told us they were either reluctant or refused to go downtown because of the immigrant population. Some said they were planning to leave the city soon, while others said the immigrants should go back to where they came from.

But the local politicians and law enforcement officials beg to disagree. Imagine that, sounds just like Springfield, OH!

Kristin R. Hopkins, the president of the Charleroi Borough, said the borough expresses "deep concern" over the representation of their community's challenges.

"Trump chose to exploit our town for political purposes, using divisive rhetoric to unfairly target the Haitian immigrant community," Hopkins wrote.

She says the city has seen a population rise for the first time in decades. She says Haitian immigrants have been "unjustly scapegoated" for many of Charleroi's problems.

"Rather than acknowledging the real economic issues the town is facing, some have chosen to unfairly target the Haitian community, judging the entire group based on misinformation and fear of outsiders," Hopkins said, adding welcoming immigrants is part of the town's history and that the focus should be about solutions, like what should be down about the job loss at the Anchor-Hocking plant.

MSN brings in another stock character, Charleroi Regional Police Chief Chad Zelinsky, who denies the Hatians are a problem:

Mr. Zelinsky is adamant that he and his team have seen no increase in crime in the half-decade during which the town’s population has swelled by up to 50% due to immigration — largely from Haiti, but also from West African and Asian countries. In fact, the chief compares today’s situation favorably to a few years ago, when opioid-addicted “zombies” were more common.

And oddly enough, just like in Springfield, he's backed up by another local pol:

Former Charleroi Mayor Nancy Ellis went further. She described Charleroi’s immigrants as model neighbors — more reliable, in fact, than the town’s long-time residents. They’re first in line to pay taxes, she said. As if on cue, while we chatted multiple Haitians dutifully showed up to pay parking fines.

Most striking of all, Ms. Ellis said (and others confirmed), this year the town’s immigrants organized clean-up efforts for Charleroi’s Memorial Day celebrations: “No white people showed up.”

So the story seems to be, just like in Springfield, the town fathers -- er, parents -- chose to bring in a new proletariat to replace the old one, and the new proletariat is turning out to be better than the old deplorables. who are lazy, ungrateful, racist, drug-addled zombies.

But there's another narrarive lurking in the background:

How did [the Haitians] end up in Charleroi? It is, indeed, implausible that they chose to come to the small Pennsylvania town on their own. This isn’t the result of people coming to America and ending up in a town where they know somebody.

Rather, what you discover in listening to people on the ground is that they end up in Charleroi—or countless other American cities like the high-profile case of Springfield, Ohio—because of a sophisticated operation that involves local businesses that want low-wage labor, “staffing agencies” that not only have access to migrant labor but also frequently source them housing and transportation to the job sites, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that help connect the staffing agencies with newly arrived migrants.

It is not surprising that a sophisticated sourcing ecosystem would arise to connect low-wage migrants with employers needing low-wage workers. Indeed, such a system is a necessity because America has adopted—on a bipartisan basis—what we might call the “Jobs Americans Won’t Do” theory of labor policy. The theory argues that our economy is filled with tens of millions of jobs that are inherently low productivity and, therefore, too low paying to attract Americans, necessitating the importation of a foreign workforce to do them for us.

. . ., “They say ‘we can’t find people to work.’ Well, that’s a half truth,” Andy Armbruster, a lifelong native of Charleroi said. “There’s people who would work if you paid them the going wage for the work. But they want to pay less and so they ended up getting involved with these agencies that bring in these workers.”

. . . [A] Charleroi business owner invited CBS News into his factory to see the work being done by migrant workers. Though only a few seconds of video is shown in the CBS report, the main task one sees workers doing in the video is manually moving bowls of food from one conveyor belt onto another. It’s not difficult to imagine automation playing a greater role in that process.

The piece argues that

a job traditionally done by low-wage or slave labor can be transformed by cutting-edge technological innovation at the center of 21st century great power competition.

. . . Productivity increases won’t change the nature of every low-skill job. But in a higher-wage economy with greater income to pay for low-skill services, even the service sector sees its wages go up. That’s why it was possible 50 years ago for a bartender and a maid to own their own home, raise their children in a safe neighborhood, and, ultimately, retire with dignity. Is our economy providing that same opportunity today?

Immigration policy is not just a question of economics. It has tremendous implications on our culture, our national mores, and our ability to provide dignity and basic services to our citizens. What is being done to these communities is a tragedy, and it is an avoidable one.

But there's another parallel that goes unspoken in this piece: it mentions the "staffing agencies" amd NGOs (though not the government subsidies) that move the immigrants into unlikely places in the US -- but at least in Springfield, local politicians are apparently either profiting directly by renting to the immigrants, or they're getting payoffs to enable the situation, or both. The story doesn't get that far with Charleroi, but I have at least a feeling that something's hinky, as it is in Springfield.

Springfield, OH And Gov DeWine

I was intrigued to read this piece:

The GOP governor of Ohio and many pro-migration media outlets insist the federal government’s huge Haitian migration into the city of Springfield is legal.

“They are there legally,” Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a September 20, op-ed for the New York Times. “I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield.”

Yesterday I linked to a story that refers to Haitians, Venezuelans, and others as "parole migrants". I've been calling them "quasi-legal". One of the programs by which they're in the country is Termporary Protected Status, which accordinbg to Wikipedia

is given by the United States government to eligible nationals of designated countries, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security, who are present in the United States. In general, the Secretary of Homeland Security may grant temporary protected status to people already present in the United States who are nationals of a country experiencing ongoing armed conflict, an environmental disaster, or any temporary or extraordinary conditions that would prevent the foreign national from returning safely and assimilating into their duty [sic]. Temporary protected status allows beneficiaries to live and, in some cases, work in the United States for a limited amount of time. As of March 2022, there are more than 400,000 foreign nationals in Temporary Protected Status.

The entry goes on to say,

The 2021 United States Supreme Court case Sanchez v. Mayorkas affirmed that temporary protected status only granted legal status to remain in the country and was not equivalent to lawful admission into the country. Thus, those immigrants that had entered the country unlawfully but had received temporarily protected status are ineligible to apply for permanent resident status simply through virtue of their temporary protected status.

Thus Gov DeWine's remarks are misleading -- the Haitians here under Temporary Protected Status aren't "legal migrants". They're here under a temporary provision that can be revoked any time, for instance, if a new administration declares that Haiti is not a country for which its migrants are eligible. This raises the puzzling question of why Gov DeWine, a Republican, supports the presence of so many Haitians in Springfield and appears to be so sensitive when the issue comes up in media.

Although there's less documentation for Haitians eating pets and protected waterfowl, troubling incidents have definitely come to light:

🚨🪿 Springfield, Ohio:

𝗜 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗛𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 “𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁” 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹𝘀.

“We had a… pic.twitter.com/9hBfRealU6

— Tayler Hansen (@TaylerUSA) September 13, 2024

Haitians causing traffic accidents in Springfield have also been a widely reported problem, most recently here:

Springfield has attracted national media attention in recent weeks over reports that some of the Haitians were stealing and eating pets and waterfowl, but residents say a more pressing issue has been their reckless driving.

. . . One Springfield resident estimated that there are four to five accidents a day caused by the Haitian immigrants, who are somehow able to drive around town without understanding basic traffic laws.

. . . In December, Springfield grandmother Kathy Heaton was struck and killed by a Haitian immigrant driving with an expired license while she was collecting her garbage cans. Prosecutors declined to charge the 38-year-old driver, the Post reported.

. . . [Neighboring Tremont City, OH Police Chief Chad] Duncan told the Blaze that the immigrants are often not licensed to operate vehicles, but Springfield appears to be protecting them from facing any real consequences for their reckless driving.

. . . Duncan told Rosas about a recent traffic stop in Tremont City involving a Haitian national going 44 mph in a 25 mph zone.

“He didn’t even have a license,” he said, adding that it was the second time over a two-week period that he pulled the driver over so he had the individual’s car towed.

Duncan told Rosas that he didn’t think Springfield police would have towed the vehicle in that instance, and speculated why he thought that was the case.

“If you get two misdemeanors, you are subject to be deported,” he explained.

In this post, I covered how Springfield's Republican mayor and others in the city establishment are profiting from the Haitians by renting slum housing to them and employing them in sweatshops. Chief Duncan speculates here that the Springfield police have been told not to arrest the Haitians for traffic offenses, because it could get them deported, which would cut into the incomes of the mayor and his cronies. This would also explain why the Springfield police chief has been so quick to minimize the Haitian problem with the media.

On September 12, I noted that once Trump surfaced the Sprinfgfield Haitian problem at the debate, Gov DeWine suddenly sent the Ohio State Highway Patrol to Springfield to help solve the traffic problem -- but Chief Duncan of the neighboring town noted another part of the story:

Duncan also said that his access to Springfield’s police radio frequency was cut off after the city was thrust into the media spotlight over the Haitian influx.

“We were able to hear them on the radio. They have decided to go silent. We don’t know what’s going on in the city,” Duncan said. “That happened the day they brought the State Troopers in to help them out.”

When asked why he believes Springfield Police shut off communications, Duncan speculated that it was to avoid accountability for their actions.

“When no one can hear what you’re saying, they don’t know what you’re doing so they don’t have to answer for it,” he explained.

So what's up with Gov DeWine? A problem like the huge quantities of immigrants coming in under Temporary Protected Status wouldn't exist unless powerful people wanted it. In the case of Springfield, these powerful people are Republicans, and they have the Republican governor covering their backs.

"Trump Should Be Running Away With the Election. Why Isn’t He?"

An essay by Oiver Wiseman with the above title is at The Free Press, tellingly limked at Real Clear Politics:

A lot has changed since [July 15] —most importantly Trump’s opponent—and rather than holding an unassailable lead, he is in the middle of a dogfight for the White House. What happened? Part of the story is of a Democratic Party pulling itself together, ditching its senescent candidate, and falling into line behind Kamala Harris. But the other part concerns Donald Trump himself, and the campaign he has chosen to run.

I dom't think it's a coincidence at all that Real Clear Politics likes this essay -- it chraracterizes the current campaign as a "dogfight for the White House" almost entirely bsased on the RCP poll aggregates that mix garbage polls with a few respectaable ones and come up with averages that put Kamala slightly ahead, which justifies the "razor thin" conventional wisdom about the current state of the election. If anything, current reports show visible movement in Trump's direction, on top of the near-universal observation that Trump outperforms the polls on Election Day. For instance,

Former President Donald Trump has surged three points in Pennsylvania since July, while Vice President Kamala Harris has dropped one point, according to a poll.

. . . Trump registered at 43 percent in a July Susquehanna poll conducted from July 22-28, as the Hill noted. Harris, at 47 percent in July, had a four-point edge on Trump, while independent Robert F Kennedy had seven percent of the response.

However, the lead has vanished as Trump, who was endorsed by Kennedy following the independent’s departure from the race, surges heading into the home stretch of the election.

But Wiseman continues,

And yet the presidential race is a toss-up. . . . Is it because she is getting a very easy ride from the media? Okay, that may be part of it. With only a handful of interviews and some help from a sympathetic press corps, Harris has shed her image as the most unpopular vice president in recent history and rebranded as a viable candidate.

But more to the point, Trump has allowed her to rebrand, offering no consistent critique of the country’s eminently critique-able vice president. He flopped so badly in his first debate with her he is now running scared from a rematch.

Again, we're seeing the same imputation that Trump "flopped" the debate that we saw from Sean Trende and Karl Rove, and my answer continues to be that the single memorable line from the night was Trump's:

In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there.

This claim was immediately denounced by the same media that gave Kamala her free ride as a "hoax", while it never took up the hoaxes that Kamala herself raised in the debate, such as the Charlottesville "very fine people" hoax. But as I've been saying, the eating-the-cats meme has gone viral, for a key reason: it calls out the actual damage the surge of quasi-legal immigrants with work permits has done. This is in fact a policy issue that Trump has continued to pursue:

“Get ready to leave,” Trump told Fox News when he was asked what message he would say to the more than 1 million parole migrants. “Especially quickly if they’re criminals, get ready to leave because you’re going to be going out real fast,” he added.

"Parole migrants" covers several categories of quasi-legals who are under various types of parole or protected status but are not formally "legal".

Many of the job-seeking parole migrants fly in from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ukraine, and elsewhere via commercial flights. These “CHNV” parole migrants get two-year visas to take jobs in the United States while separated from their families at home — much like President George W. Bush’s failed 2001 “Any Willing Worker” plan.

Many other parole migrants and families cross the southern border after getting quasi-legal approval via the “CBP One” cellphone app.

The result is a flood of hard-working, compliant, wage-cutting, rent-spiking workers into Americans’ towns and cities, such as Springfield, Ohio, and New York City.

These parole migrants will work in sweatshop conditions, forced to kick back some of their low pay to "employment agencies" that sponsor them. They're compliant, because if they lose their jobs, they'll be sent back. It appears that the parole migrant policies stem from Biden executve orders that can be canceled as soon as Trump comes into office. It should be noted, though, that a debate-team style discussion of these policies will simply put people to sleep. Wiseman seems to miss this entirely:

Instead of working hard to convince voters Harris is unfit for the top job, the Trump campaign has wasted too much time on two things: stupid stuff and bad stuff.

. . . Second, the bad. . . . Indulging an unproven, sinister fantasy about pet-eating Haitian migrants in Ohio.

Wiseman concludes,

He had the chance to . . . rise above partisanship and lawfare and political violence and occupy the center ground of American politics with a pitch focused on the economy and immigration, all while hammering Harris for her radical past positions and the fact she was likely part of the Biden cover-up, pretending he was competent enough to run for reelection.

I don[t understand. Lawfare and political violence have been tools of the other side -- Fani Willis and Jack Smith on one hand; Thomas Crooks and Ryan Routh on the other. So far, it appears that Trump has defeated both the lawfare and political violence, and as far as I can tell, he's neither unleashed federal and state prosecutors against Kamala nor dispatched assassination squads. Why suggest he's doing these things?

But by the same token, he's been making just what Wiseman thinks he ought to be making, "a pitch focused on the economy and immigration, all while hammering Harris for her radical past positions". The eating the pets meme is, after all, focused on immigration, while he's been running ad after ad showing Kamala herself advocating her radical past positions. What else could he be doing?

What seems to be at the heart of the complaints I've seen recently from Karl Rove and now Oliver Wiseman is that Trump isn't turning into Mitt Romney, some sort of boring pretty-boy non-partisan centrist. He's doing just fine as Donald Trump.

Yet More Dribbles Out On The Rouths

Yesterday had two headlines, first, that Routh's son, Oran, was arrested on child pornography charges following an FBI search of his phone related to the investigation of his father. Second, via Politico, US officials looked at Americans traveling to Ukraine to fight. Ryan Routh fell through the cracks. Both raise separate sets of questions.

Regarding the child pornography arrest, leaving the specific charge aside, what we're being told in the corporate media narrative contradicts earlier parts of the media narrative -- for starters, just the puzzle of what Oran had been telling reporters about his father. For instance, as of September 15,

Routh's son, Oran Routh, reached by DailyMail.com shortly after Sunday's shooting, said this was the first he'd heard of the alleged assassination attempt.

'This was the first I heard about it,' the 35-year-old exclusively told DailyMail.com. 'Was my father shot or injured?'

. . . 'He's my dad and all he's had is couple traffic tickets, as far as I know,' the son said. 'That's crazy. I know my dad and love my dad, but that's nothing like him.'

. . . Routh moved to Hawaii a few years back and was living with his longtime girlfriend. He said he didn't know his father was even in Florida.

'He said he was at the beach, but I thought that meant the outer banks in Hawaii,' he said. 'I didn't ask him for more information because we've had a falling out. We've grown apart.'

He wouldn't explain the nature of their 'falling out,' but still spoke highly of his father.

'He's not a violent person,' he said. 'He's a hard worker and a great dad. He's a great dude, a nice guy and has worked his whole f**king life.'

This is at varianmce with the actual record:

Court records showed Routh has a long history of breaking traffic laws, not paying his taxes on time and writing bad checks. But it was in 2002 that he lost his right to own a gun when he pleaded guilty to a felony in North Carolina for possessing an illegal explosive device in April.

Months after his arrest in that case while released on a bond, Routh fled from a traffic stop by a police officer near his home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and barricaded himself inside his roofing business for several hours before police were able to arrest him for having a concealed handgun without a permit, according to court records and a 2002 news article by the Greensboro News & Record.

A few days later, Routh pleaded guilty to possession of what court records described as a "binary explosive with a 10-inch detonation cord and a blasting cap," which is defined in North Carolina law as a weapon of mass destruction and is a felony punishable by up to 59 months in prison, according to the county district attorney's office and the Guilford County Superior Court clerk's office. He was sentenced to probation.

Eight years later, he again pleaded guilty to felonies after he was charged with possession of stolen goods: a blowtorch, a pull-cart and a power cord, according to the district attorney's office. As the owner of several roofing companies, he has been repeatedly sued by people accusing him of not paying his bills.

Oran Routh has apparently been living in Greensboro, NC:

Oran Routh was arrested this week after authorities searched his Greensboro, North Carolina, home “in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation,” an FBI official said in court papers.

Greensboro had also been the Routh family's home town, where Oran's father, Ryan, had been well known to police:

The man accused of pointing a rifle into the golf course where former President Donald Trump was playing last weekend was known in his hometown as something of a bad actor.

“Weird” is how one of Ryan Routh’s former neighbors in Greensboro described him. She told reporters he once had a horse in his house and that he also kept guns.

. . . But if Routh’s neighbors didn’t know him well, the police sure did.

“We were on a first-name basis,” said Eric Rasecke, a now-retired Greensboro police officer whose beat included the areas where Routh lived and worked.

Although on September 15, Oran told the Daily Mail he thought Ryan was back in Hawaii, federal prosecutors said in court Monday:

Routh’s cellphone data shows that he “traveled from the Greensboro, North Carolina, area, to West Palm Beach, Florida,” on Aug. 14, according to the filing in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach.

It's hard not to think Oran knew his father was in town, despite what he'd been telling the press. Even before his child pornography arrest, I have a sense we can't trust a thing he says.

But let's look at the other issue: Ryan, who should have been on a watch list -- as various commentators have pointed out before now -- somehow "fell through a crack". At the Politico link above,

The Department of Homeland Security in 2022 launched an interagency effort to scrutinize Americans returning from Ukraine’s war zone. The previously unreported effort aimed to identify Americans who might turn violent upon their return, according to five people familiar with the plans. Officials worried the Russia-Ukraine war would attract American extremists who would learn combat skills on the battlefield and then attack their fellow Americans when they returned.

Given the mindset of "officials", it's hard to avoid thinking the likely "extremists" would be of the right-wing Trumpist variety, and as long as Routh was anti-Trump, he was fine. But even so, he'd been caught with a "binary explosive with a 10-inch detonation cord and a blasting cap", which you'd think would put him on some kind of list -- you sure you're OK with him getting on a plane? -- and then in 2019, the FBI decided not to follow up on a tip:

Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the Miami field office, said at a news conference Monday [September 16] that the bureau was tipped off that Routh was a "felon in possession of a firearm."

"In following up on the tip, the alleged complainant was interviewed and did not verify providing the initial information," Veltri said. "The FBI passed that information to local law enforcement in Honolulu."

The investigation was then closed due to lack of additional information.

Apparently the follow-up didn't include finding out about the possession of a weapon of mass destruction charge. Regarding the potential investigation as a returnee from Ukraine, the Politico piece continues,

The episode raises questions about whether the U.S. government is applying the right criteria to assess the risks of Americans who have tried to join the war. Experts say most of the Americans who have fought are U.S. veterans concerned about protecting the fledgling democracy from Russia’s invasion.

Routh, however, was a different story.

“He probably should have been subject, based on his behavior, to some type of threat assessment,” said John Cohen, a former top DHS official who described the effort to POLITICO.

But he was anti-Trump, so not a problem, huh? Sundance observes at The Last Refuge,

As you take off your shoes and undergo extensive scrutiny as a result of the Patriot Act, the subsequently formed DHS and the TSA, it’s worth remembering, as initially sold, the creation of the DHS was specifically intended to stop domestic terror threats, ie. EXACTLY the activity that Ryan Routh was engaged in.

The justification to create the DHS and subsequent intrusive activity of the United States security apparatus, was to stop unstable and sketchy people from carrying out violence internally within the homeland. However, as many voices warned at the time, the mission of the agencies created by The Patriot Act, actualized with DHS and FBI conducting surveillance of parents at school board meetings, monitoring white men in the U.S. military, tracking pastors, preachers and Christian congregations, and registering law-abiding gun owners while the sketchy and unstable simply run amok.

The whole record of Routh's adult life says he was precisely the kind of person who should have been on some kind of watch list.

More Dribbles Out About Ryan Routh

There's been a certain amount of anxiety over the US Justice Departmebnt's release of a handwritten letter from wannabe Trump assassin Ryan Routh offering $150,000 to anyone who can "complete the job" -- except that it was found in a box Routh left with an unnamed contact months before his September 15 arrest. In many ways, the letter raises the least of the new questions. Here is more of what came out in yesterdays bail hearing, via USA Today:

Routh allegedly left the handwritten letter in a metal box with someone, who wasn’t named in the court filing from prosecutors, months before the incident at the golf course. The witness opened the box after hearing about Routh's arrest, and law enforcement visited the person Sept. 18. The box also contained ammunition, a metal pipe, building materials, four phones and several letters, prosecutors said.

“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” said the letter, a picture of which appears in the court filing. “I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”

. . . The FBI’s analysis of Routh’s phone showed that he traveled from the area around Greensboro, North Carolina, to West Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug.14. On multiple days and times from Aug. 18 to Sept. 15, Routh’s phone accessed cell towers near Trump International Golf Club and the former president’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.

After local authorities pulled Routh over in a black Nissan Xterra seen leaving the golf course, officers discovered license plates didn’t belong to the vehicle. FBI agents found two additional license plates inside, along with six cellphones, 12 pairs of gloves, a Hawaii driver’s license, a passport and a handwritten list of dates in August, September and October where the former president had been or was expected.

One of the cellphones contained a search query asking how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico.

Via NBC Los Angeles,

Cell site records from two of the phones indicated Routh had traveled from Greensboro, North Carolina, to West Palm Beach on Aug. 14.

Further, on “multiple days and times from Aug. 18, 2024, to Sept. 15, 2024, Routh’s cellphone accessed cell towers located near Trump International and the former president’s residence at Mar-a-Lago,” the filing said.

His defense attorney said Routh’s sister is a licensed attorney in North Carolina and was willing to house him if he was released on bail. Ultimately, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ryon M. McCabe ruled Routh would be held pending his trial.

A web search tells me the Nissan Xterra was discontinued in 2015, so this is probably not a rental. The fake license plates suggest it could be stolen, or it might belong to Routh's sister in North Carolina. A web searchfor "Routh sister" comes up empty. A search on the North Carolina bar site brings up a Ms Kelly R Routh in Charlotte. The Routh Law web site says it specializes in family law, but there is nothing to indicate any connection to a Ryan Routh. However, this same attorney Kelly R Routh is listed as receiving a 5-year disciplinary suspension in 2022 for mishandling entrusted funds. Her web site says nothing about her suspension.

If his sister is an attorney, this may help explain the apparently lenient treatment Ryan has previously received for his previous criminal convictions. Commentators have occasionally raised the question of how Routh could have been charged in 2002 with

possession of a fully automatic machine gun, referred to in court filings as a weapon of mass destruction[, a felony]. He was also charged with carrying a concealed weapon, as well as driving without a valid license and resisting, delaying, and obstructing law enforcement, according to Greensboro News and Record.

While the disposition of the case isn’t entirely clear, Routh did plead guilty to carrying a concealed gun.

Possession of a weapon of mass destruction in North Carolina is a Class F felony, which can result in up to 41 months in prison. Routh's prior criminal record should have resulted in a more severe penalty than what he eventually seems to have received. Another source says,

In exchange for pleading guilty, the state gave him 60 months of probation where his firearms and explosives were seized and destroyed by Greensboro police. He also had to have a mental evaluation. (Editor's note: we are working to see if Routh completed this requirement and how it went).

Records also show Routh's criminal background in North Carolina stretches back to 1984 when he had a failure to report an accident charge.

In 2010, Routh said he had never tried drugs or alcohol. That's the same year he was convicted of possession of stolen property. A judge wrote that Routh's stolen property conviction was the possession of three trailers of stolen tools and building materials (welding torches, tanks, carts, power cords, etc) from sites where he worked as a roofer. He also had a stolen pickup truck.

A police investigator found Routh kept the stolen property at his business and the property was a big mess. When a neighbor asked him to clean up the property "he pulled a knife on him and told him to leave the property."

The property owner said Routh was using the property with no lease and without her knowledge.

We're still left with the question of how Routh lived in Florida between August 14 and September 15, and the separate question for his sister as an attorney -- it's hard to avoid thinking that, given her brother's record, she knew, or should have known, he was up to no good. At least for now, she's starting to look like an enabler at best, leaving aside the possible suspension of the attorney Kelly Routh, which doesn't bode well for her own future.

But the most we can say for the time being is that the prosecutors seem to have a great deal more than they've made public.