Living way outside the path of totality this time, I watched it on TV. Then had to get busy writing to my County Commissioners. The MAGAts are coming for them, and they need back up.

Fort Bend is not the only red county I’ve lived in that has ‘issues’. A little over a year ago I wrote about our Constitutional Sheriff Songer hiring his fellow Constitutional Sheriff, former GOP Senate and Gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp to mind the county jail. Well, the chickens have come home to roost so to speak, and the hen house is in really tough shape. The Commissioners had to call a special meeting, voted to Shut Down The Jail, and contract the jailing to the Northern Regional Correctional facility just across the Columbia in The Dalles. You know, the professionals. If you thought a rural county like Klickitat (population 23,000 or so) should be able to handle their law enforcement and holding facilities, you’d be wrong. Once Mr. Constitutional Sheriff Songer got a taste of national attention, I guess he couldn’t get enough. So here’s what got him more notice.

A year ago, a young Native American man going through fentanyl withdrawal was being held in the jail. No intake examination or medical screening. No medical treatment. No detox protocols. No mental health care. In a solitary cell with means for him to commit suicide. And so he did. Now his parents are suing. The only screening was a risk assessment by a corrections officer, who wrote that the man had no signs of mental health issues, was not acting strange or under the influence, not disoriented or confused, had never attempted suicide, no signs he was vulnerable. Yet other records show he was not fully conscious when he arrived, and his (available) county records showed past reports of attempted suicide. That’s ONE.

Then last fall, a woman who had been in the jail for two months (for a parole violation) ended up in the hospital in deteriorating condition, ”covered in bugs, potentially septic and smelled ‘like dead rotting flesh’ according to an on-scene officer”.  She was treated and has since been released. If you dare, you can find more here, but it’s a tough read. You know these guys hate it when public tv and radio get on their case. And like all good MAGAts, Songer and Culp are blaming the State of Washington for their mess. That’s TWO.

Add to all this a great big bill from the hospital for treating people from the jail who are left to fester, and the Commissioners also have a budget crunch added to the tale of woe. That’s THREE STRIKES, you’re out. So good on them for doing the right thing and proposing to contract out to professionals who can deal with the prisoners humanely. But the blowback from the Sheriff, his posse, armed wanna be LEOs and the red hat crowd is huge. They are overflowing Commission meetings, snagging up all the spots on the zoom links, and scaring the bejeezus out of the rest of us citizens like the commissioners who are just trying to do a good job for the county and all of its citizens.

Damn, I was hoping for a rapture today. But they are still here.

Texas AG Ken Paxton must be a special kind of stupid. Not only does he do whatever stupid thing he wants in his own state, he thinks he can do stupid in states not his own. Because he suspects some Texas families have taken their children for gender affirming treatment, he feels he’s got to crack down on that caca de pollo. So he sued Seattle Children’s Hospital to get them to hand over information. Never mind that  Seattle Children’s has no ties to Texas, is not incorporated in Texas, does no banking or advertising in Texas, and has no staff that provides care in Texas. Oh, and HIPAA anyone? Such a stunt worked for the Tennessee AG with Vanderbuilt, which is now being sued for releasing patient records. But Paxton sees no downside to his stupidity. Fortunately, we have the best AG in the country in Bob Ferguson (now running for Governor). And WA was a step ahead of these bozos, passing the Shield Law in response to the Dobbs ruling. “Under the law, Washington courts and law enforcement may not aid, enforce subpoenas and investigations by or make arrests at the request of outside states seeking to prosecute treatment that they ban but that is legal in Washington.” I love living in WA State. I really do.

There was a spring election for the Hubbard Rural Fire Protection District, about 30 miles southwest of Portland, OR. It is a small district, about 7 square miles, covering some 5,000 residents. Three positions were open, only 2 candidates filed, both incumbents. They both won handily. But the low voter turnout for this off off season election meant that it came down to the write-ins for the third position. We in the PNW usually take our fire district elections very seriously. I don’t know what they are smoking out there in Marion County. But I digress. There were 20 names, five of which got 2 votes each. I’m guessing there was only one each for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There may even have been one for Sasquatch. Whatever could we do to solve this problem???

We roll a 12 sided die. None of the write-ins were there but they all had stand-ins. Can we have a drum roll please while someone tosses the die?

Unbelievably, the first roll had 3 of the 5 come up with 10s. So drum roll once again please.

The dice don’t lie. The new would-be Fire District Commissioner, who is not paid, but is part of a board that oversees 6 paid staff (2 seasonal) and 26 volunteers is DONALD J. TRUMP, whose surrogate rolled him a 12. See? He can still win an election!

But wait just a minute. He has to own property or live in the district. They’re working on determining if he is eligible. I needed this laugh today. Seriously.

I don’t want my friends in Texas to think they are completely alone in CRAZZZY. It’s all a matter of degree. The CRAZZZY is everywhere.

The rumors I’d been hearing since the weekend were confirmed by a reliable source. Good Old (Boy) Klickitat County even made the OPB radio news broadcast. I think I’ve mentioned our Constitutional Sheriff, Bob Songer who won reelection by 150 votes. Since reelection, his undersheriff, a onetime election challenger, requested to be reassigned to detective. Songer accommodated him, then promoted the county jailer to undersheriff, creating an opening for a $94,000 a year job at the County Jail. That’s a pretty good salary by Klickitat County standards (2020 median household income $56,667). One would think there’d be lots of applicants.

Well, old Bob had trouble filling that slot so he called his good buddy Loren Culp, fellow Constitutional Sheriff, failed gubernatorial and CD4 candidate, to see if he needed a job. Culp has been hanging out in Moses Lake, about 3 hours’ drive away, since losing 2 elections. He’d had his butt handed to him running against Jay Inslee in 2018, then set his sights on Rep. Dan Newhouse in 2020, who pissed him off by voting to impeach Trump. He didn’t make it out of the Top Two Primary for that one. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association named Culp “Police Chief of the Decade” while running for office and doing his thing in Republic, WA (pop 1,060), way up near the Canadian border, where he grew up. Old Bob just got “Sheriff of the Year” but the politics bonded them. Both men were outspoken opponents of a gun safety law passed with overwhelming support in the WA legislature in 2018. Neither of these upstanding LEOs would enforce enhanced background checks or a raise in age from 18 to 21 for purchasing semi-automatic rifles, among other reasonable things, and were very public about their opinions.

This will be a big step up for Culp. Klickitat County (pop 23,000) and the county seat Goldendale (pop 3,500) will be like the ‘big city’ in comparison to his former digs. According to Songer, Culp’s qualifications for running the jail include that he was “not only an honorable individual, he’s a religious individual and supports the Constitution for the citizens”. Checks all of Songer’s boxes for hiring process. Won’t support gun safety laws, check. Makes racist and insensitive remarks while campaigning, check. Endorsed by TFG. Check. Ten Years of Law Enforcement experience in Republic. Check. Thinks like me. Check. Some folks surmise that Sheriff of the Year, age 77, is lining up his replacement. Ya think?

I learned how to shoot and clean a gun/shotgun, and load shells when I lived in RI. I shot targets, trap (my favorite) and skeet with 22 and 357 handguns, 210, 10 and 20 gauge shotguns, and even got my shoulder smacked by a 30-06 rifle. Only once for that last one. Never shot a real live thing, though. This is all to say I am not an anti any gun screaming liberal who has never touched one in my life. I just choose to not have one. I don’t hunt but am happy to cook up whatever y’all want to kill. I don’t get joy of any kind by hitting a bullseye over a man shaped target, even though sometimes it might make me feel good. And I’m not a fan of video games of any kind.  Now that is out of the way, I need to tell you what yanked my chain yesterday.

We have a Facebook Group for Happenings in our little town in SW WA, a nice rural area population about 2500 including the general urban area. It’s a red county, as are all of them east of the Cascades. But our town is on the western edge, which I told you is somewhat purplish. Someone advertised a concealed weapons class. No big. They happen all the time and are usually good for multiple adjoining states (OR, WA, ID). They hold them at hotel meeting rooms and honestly, that doesn’t bother me a bit. Well, this guy wants to hold his class in the town park. You read it right, a concealed weapons class in the town park. I was disturbed by this but went about my day. Later, I revisited and found that people were wanting to sign up in droves. I commented that I felt the park was an inappropriate venue for such a class. Well, smack me silly, I stood alone. They were not amused when I suggested they ‘get a room’ or hold it at the gun club. I reached out to a longtime resident of a friendly political persuasion for support, and the response was, it’s just a class. This from a Berner, no less, with peace stickers all over their hybrid. I can’t help but think if this is going on in my little neck of the woods, what’s going on everywhere else? Reality check time, WMDBS customers, am I over-reacting? 

In response to a House Oversight Committee document request, Trump’s lawyers sent a slick pamphlet describing how he’s NOT going to track money he receives from foreign governments, strictly prohibited by the Constitution’s emoluments clause.  Much has been written by legal scholars about Trump’s egregious violations of the Constitutional provision, and it’s all been ignored by the GOP and surprisingly, the press.  The Brookings Institute has published some of the best analysis of Trump’s real and continuing problem of taking money from foreign governments. It’s an impeachable offense, but no one is even trying, at least yet, to do anything about it.  Bloomberg has written about how money is pouring into Trump’s DC hotel which is housed in the Old Post Office building, both from foreign governments and GOP World, which has established the hotel as its new headquarters.  Oh, BTW, Trump is also violating federal rules prohibiting leasing to an elected official, but that’s another story the press is ignoring.

Before the inauguration, Trump said that he was putting all of his interests in a trust, which he didn’t, and wouldn’t be involved, which he is.  The pamphlet generally outlines how his spider web of hotels, resorts, and golf clubs will attempt to track payments, but basically says that it’s just too difficult, “impractical” I believe it says, to track all the payments.

So there.  Emoluments Clause?  We don’t need no Emoluments Clause – it’s just too hard to keep up with the graft, so we’ll just not try.  Just another day in Trumpland.