Signs of Life
And, a quick examination of the Fallout From Governor Abbott's Enhanced Safety Inspections, plus, Questions for the FBI in Wake of Congressman Cuellar Probe
Hello again friends,
It’s been a while— no apologies, just some mumbling excuses about things getting a little busier at the day job. Don’t get too excited— nothing juicy— just some awkward experiences involving off-site technical support and how it can make what should be 5-seconds-to-fix technical issues last for days.
Enough said about that.
Another reason we’ve been largely silent, has been a certain feeling that a little space and distance was needed to properly assess Governor Greg Abbott’s effort at putting pressure on Mexico and the U.S. Federal Government. Certainly, there didn’t seem much point in breathlessly repeating coverage of the first, second, and third busloads of volunteer illegals arriving in Washington D.C.
All of that had a certain air of meaninglessness, frankly. What are a handful of busloads to the thousands that have already been sent all over the country already? What are a few busloads worth, when each busload is almost immediately getting transferred to other transportation and whisked away. That’s basically what happened in Washington. No one stayed in DC. It basically amounted to what seems like a cheap grab at some headlines.
It barely qualifies as a symbolic effort on the charitable end of the scale. Over at the other end, you might just call it a big steaming pile of nonsense.
The meat of the matter, as we and others predicted at the time was the international trade snafu brought on by the Governor’s enhanced safety inspections.
On the surface— it certainly seemed to get results. There were meetings and press conferences with the Governor and Counterparts from various Mexican border states, all saying very nice and conciliatory things about Border Security and Immigration.
But, as one past President observed— you have to trust, but verify. It honestly remains to be seen if anything lasting will result from the governor’s stunt.
If nothing else, he certainly grabbed a lot of folks by the nose and got them paying attention in ways that they haven’t been. Sad, that it took the prospect of expensive avocados and other produce to get folks to arrest their navel gazing and register for even a brief second how the border is bleeding.
Call us melodramatic for saying it, but if the border area were a patient on an operating table surely the surgeon would be calling for the crash cart by now. Or for extra clamps to pinch off some arteries at least.
What else can you call it, when people are diving headlong into the waters near Eagle Pass, some drowning, trying to make it to the other side? When even conservative estimates suggest the vast majority of women being smuggled across are being raped as a matter of routine? Doctors Without Borders put the number at 1-in-3 back when Trump was President.
Wonder if the numbers have changed at all since then. Weird that no one’s said much about it.
We mentioned earlier the deaths of illegal aliens lost in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass. The river’s also claimed a Texas soldier.
National Guardsman Bishop E. Evans drowned after diving into the river to try and rescue some illegals that were in distress over the weekend.
Compounding the tragedy, the two he was trying to rescue are now accused of being drug smugglers and are in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Some are surely tempted to observe the bitter possibility that their survival is not a fair trade for his loss— but— that is sadly the risk that comes with this kind of heroic selflessness.
Dirtbag or Saint, the river plays no favorites and claims each and all it may. This particular stretch of river near Eagle Pass is said to have quite a bit of depth and some strong and very unpredictable currents.
Looking ahead, there’s talk in Uvalde of something similar to the Governor’s safety inspection snafu. The Mayor there is making noise about shutting down Highway 90 in a form of protest. Uvalde’s been seeing many of the same sort of constant high speed pursuits that Kinney County has, and this would be his way of trying to draw eyeballs to the crisis.
Uvalde is well inland from the border— but, like Kinney County— it squats directly on a major route leading to San Antonio, I-35, and the rest of the United States. And they’ve been getting hammered there.
From what we’re hearing, the protest and shutdown is being scheduled for sometime around May 20th— but don’t quote us on that one. One suspects the actual date is going to be somewhat fluid, and may involve a convoy of truckers and some armed militia folks. If so— one suggests local folks may want to use their own best judgement about attending.
Circuses can be fun to watch, but no sane person wants to be in the audience the night the elephants decide to stampede.
And finally— word’s getting out that the FBI apparently doesn’t have much of anything at all in the case of U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, revealing some time ago that he is not a target of investigation.
This raises serious questions about the timing of their raid at his house, and suggestions of some kind of potential misdeeds involving him and his relationship to oil & gas concerns in Azerbaijan.
Since then, Cuellar’s been making headlines— taking the White House to task over the impending demise of Title 42 regulations and how they herald even more chaos on the border.
The raid very likely is responsible for him being in a tight runoff with immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros.
If Cuellar prevails, one is reminded of fictional character Omar Little’s observation: “You come at the king, you better not miss.”
If the Congressman is taking advice on the subject, our advice would be to consider the FBI and the Justice Department a mortal enemy from this day forward, and treat them accordingly.
Recall, Cuellar is on track for a subcommittee chair position— in some political quarters, they call that a Cardinal— a reference to the “Princes” of the Catholic Church and a suggestion of the kind of potential power a subcommittee chair would hold.
Surely a “Cardinal” will be in a position to exact some form of “reform” after what seems to have been a politically motivated case of election interference at the Justice Department.
Congressman Cuellar, what is best in life?
Thanks for reading— and indulging us in our ancient pop-cultural trivia diversion here at the end. The screenplay for Conan the Barbarian, written in 1982, was originally penned by Oliver Stone. But, Director John Milius apparently rewrote much of it. Milius was often brought in for rewrites for Spielberg and other major directors of the day— drenching scripts in testosterone, and was responsible for many famous scenes with Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones, Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, and of course Schwarzenegger in Conan.
Hope you’ve had a great Monday and are on track for a great week. As we write this, storm clouds are teasing us on the horizon— promising a good and heavy rain. We hope it happens.
As always, this newsletter is produced independently of our efforts on behalf of the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office, and does not reflect Kinney County policies or the opinions of any Kinney County Officials. Any opinions, errors, or other misdeeds committed in the act of publication are ours alone.
We’ll be back again soon— see you then.
Great tongue-in-cheek, Matt.