From the Trenches World Report

Daily Mail

Outgoing Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis handed Donald Trump his resignation letter at the White House on Thursday during an argument after he realized he couldn’t convince the president to reverse course and leave American troops in Syria.

His first order of business when he got back to his office was to tell aides to print 50 copies of the letter, ordering them to distribute them as soon as Trump announced his departure.  Continue reading “Mattis quit after trying one last time to convince Trump to leave troops in Syria”

ABC News

House Republicans voted to approve a bill to fund President Donald Trump’s $5 billion demand for a border wall, setting up a final showdown in the Senate ahead of Friday’s deadline to avert a government shutdown.

The vote received no Democratic support, and the bill’s prospects in the Senate are dim as Democrats have pledged to defeat the divisive measure.   Continue reading “House Republicans approve bill to fund border wall, setting up a final showdown in the Senate”

NPR – by Howard Berkes

Greg Kelly’s grandson, Caden, scampers to the tree-shaded creek behind his grandfather’s house to catch crawdads, as Kelly shuffles along, trying to keep up. Kelly’s small day pack holds an oxygen tank with a clear tube clipped to his nose. He has chairs spaced out on the short route so he can stop every few minutes, sit down and catch his breath, until he has enough wind and strength to start out again for the creek.

“I just pray that the Lord give me as much time as I can with him,” Kelly said, his eyes welling with tears. “He just lightens my life. I want to be as fun with him as I can. And do as much as I can with him.”   Continue reading “An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands Of Coal Miners. Regulators Could Have Stopped It”

Recently we have heard about more shootings in affluent neighborhoods, basically robberies, Washington DC being especially hit hard. What is happening is that major drug dealers who handle the big shipments of many kilos of coke are getting less and less supply, and this trickles down to the street hustler in a big way. The street hustler used to be able to rob his fellow gangster; they call it getting in a “lick” whereas they rob another gangster who they know has kilos of cocaine and big cash from nothing more than a simple word from the “Street”.   Continue reading “Gangsters Feeling the Pinch – Border Crackdown Means Less Drugs”

Michael Hoffman

In the screenshot [below], Yair Rosenberg, writing in the Judaic Tablet magazine of Dec. 17 quotes an excerpt from Black poet Alice Walker’s “It is Our Frightful Duty to Study the Talmud,” and then announces that the poem is a “slander,” as well as a “malevolent attack of anti-Semitic origin.”

The egoism in his assault on her poetry shines forth like a blinding truck light. We are the deer frozen in the headlights of his ipse dixit.   Continue reading “Alice asks questions and the parrot replies, “Slanders of the Talmud are as old as the Talmud””

There will be no broadcasts of The Word From the Trenches until after Christmas.

Yesterday at about 4:00 pm, Laura’s mom had another stroke.  We have obligations.

2018 has been a bad year and it seems it is going to stay that way right up until the last day.  Let us hope 2019 shows us a little more favor.   Continue reading “Trencher Alert”

Newser – by John Johnson

Mexico has agreed to a fundamental change on how it deals with migrants seeking asylum in the US. Instead of being allowed to cross into America, they will now be returned to Mexico to wait out the legal process, reports the AP.

The Homeland Security Department calls Mexico’s agreement to accept the migrants “historic,” while the Mexican government made clear that it viewed the move as a temporary one, reports the Washington Post.    Continue reading “Mexico Just Made a Big Change on Migrants”

FEE – by Brittany Hunter

For more than two decades, John Monem’s furniture store has been a staple of downtown Brockton, Massachusetts. But a week ago, city officials gave Monem an early Christmas present: a notice to vacate his property.

Brockton Furniture is currently located on the first floor of the tallest building in the city, 93 Centre Street. But in four months, Monem will be forced to relocate his business because the local government doesn’t think he has made enough of an effort to revitalize his own property.   Continue reading “Local Government Says Merry Christmas by Using Eminent Domain to Take Small Business Owner’s Building”

Tenth Amendment Center – by TJ Martinell

Just as some gun rights groups flip-flop on protecting the right to keep and bear arms from federal encroachment, so has Republican President Donald Trump. Not only has he ramped up federal gun control enforcement, but he has unilaterally implemented new federal gun control in the form of a bump stock ban.

As we’ve pointed before, the effectiveness of this policy is moot: the feds have no constitutional authority to restrict firearms.   Continue reading “Trump and Obama? A Tale Of Two Gun Control Proposals”

Step by step they were led to things of idle decadence – the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilization, when it was but a part of their servitude. And so, the gullible natives eventually came to call their slavery ‘culture’.

Roman Emperors

Governing – by Candice Norwood

When the International Olympic Committee announced that Atlanta would host the 1996 Summer Olympics, security for such a massive event was an immediate concern.

As part of their preparation, local police traveled to Israel to learn about its security and counterterrorism strategies. In May alone, Israel saw a total of 684 “terrorist events,” according to an Israeli government website. By contrast, since 1980, there have been 11 notable terrorist attacks with fatalities on American soil. Continue reading “U.S. Police Under Pressure to End Their Relationship With Israel”

ACLU – by Brian Hauss

Should it be a crime to call public officials corrupt? Yes, according to the police in Exeter, New Hampshire. Earlier this year, they arrested a local man for writing a comment on a news website accusing Police Chief William Shupe of covering for a corrupt officer.

Robert Frese was accused of violating New Hampshire’s criminal defamation law, which makes it a misdemeanor to intentionally and falsely disparage another person. New Hampshire’s law — and others like it in 24 other states around the country — literally make it a crime to say mean things about people.   Continue reading “New Hampshire Police Arrested a Man for Being Mean to Them on the Internet”

The Fresno Bee – by Carmen George

Laws need to be changed to allow local law enforcement to more easily communicate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in regards to criminals in jail who are deemed violent, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said Wednesday.

Boudreaux was responding to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in which ICE said Monday’s “deadly rampage could have been prevented” if the agency had been notified of Junior “Gustavo” Garcia-Ruiz’s release from jail on Friday after he was arrested for a misdemeanor charge of being under the influence of a controlled substance.   Continue reading “Tulare County sheriff after rampage: Laws should be changed to better communicate with ICE”

Let’s see now, the three-faced con man, Donald Trump, declared $5 billion would be spent on the wall he promised the people.  He is now going to take the people’s wealth that is stolen from them through an act of treason and give $4.8 billion to Mexico so they can afford to aid the caravans coming from Central America, of which by the way, we are sending $5.8 billion to aid in the organizations of the caravans that are not going to stop coming.   Continue reading “The American Nationals for the united States of the Americas response to the United States Corporation’s Pledge of $10.6 Billion to Aid the Invasion into our Country”

ABC News

The Trump administration is going around the lengthy farm bill negotiations to push for a rule that would force more people who enroll in food stamps to comply with work requirements, despite the fact that Republicans were unsuccessful in pushing the same measure through Congress.

Republicans have pushed for more work requirements for food stamp participants and for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow states to impose more requirements such as drug testing. But those requests were left out of the recently approved farm bill after Democrats refused to move forward with the changes and other GOP proposals.  Continue reading “Trump directs USDA to expand work requirements on food stamps”

The Organic Prepper

This isn’t exactly an article loaded with Christmas cheer, but there’s a very good reason that my family has strictly limited our holiday splurges this year. It’s because all the signs right now seem to indicate the US is hurtling toward an economic collapse.   Continue reading “These 8 Red Flags Warn Us We’re Speeding Toward an Economic Collapse RIGHT NOW”

LA Times

Continue reading “Senate, calling Trump’s bluff, OKs stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown”