Monday, January 05, 2026

The Peace President Strikes Again


Washed-up, right-wing actor does not know the meaning of the word "threat."


Connecticut senator Chris Murphy notes

America doesn't want this war. Nobody asked for this becuase it has nothing to do with American national security. I think that's the most important conversation to have.

Venezuela is not a security threat to the United States. They're not threataening to invade us. there is no terrorist group like Al Qaeda operating there that has plans to attack the United States. To the extent that you care about the drug trade, yes, that brings drugs but the drugs go to Europe. Fetanyl is the drug that's killing Americans. That's not coming from Venezuela. Venezuela produces cocaine. Ninety percent of  it is nor coming to the United States.

The military action of this past weekend, which was one-sided, constitutes less a war than an attack, even an invasion. However, Murphy is right about everything else. As a reporter for KCRA 3 in Sacramento, California has explained

drug seizure data shows that it's not as prominent a supplier of cocaine to the U.S. as other South American and Latin American countries.

There is also no evidence that any significant level of illegal fentanyl — the primary killer in U.S. overdose deaths — is produced in South America, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

UNODC analyzes global drug trafficking based on reporting from its member states, open sources and drug seizure information.

Most illegal fentanyl enters the U.S. from Mexico, per UNODC and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Illicit fentanyl can also be diverted, or stolen, from legal sources as medical professionals use the drug....

Venezuela is not among the primary direct traffickers of cocaine to the U.S.

Like fentanyl, most cocaine enters the U.S. from Mexico and typically gets to Mexico via maritime transportation on both the Pacific and Caribbean sides, according to UNODC research officer Antoine Vella. Some also arrives in Mexico via land transportation.

While the Trump administration's early September attacks targeted Venezuelan boats, there is no known direct cocaine trade route from Venezuela to the U.S. via sea. The only known direct Venezuela to U.S. trafficking route is via air, according to drug seizure data from UNODC. Cocaine could still arrive from Venezuela to the U.S. through intermediary countries.

Colombia, Ecuador and Panama are among the main direct traffickers of cocaine to the U.S. via boat.

Coca, the plant cocaine is made from, is mainly grown in Columbia, Peru, and Bolivia....

The three coca growing countries also have the most illegal processing facilities.

A "threat," Merriam-Webster informs us, is "an expression of intent to inflict evil, injury, or damage." If we're concerned about nations which would like to inflict injury upon the USA, we can begin with Mainland China. If we're concerned about evil, Russia is #1, with both countries presenting a serious cyberthreat to the USA.

Selling drugs to willing customers, the drug users or middlemen, does not constitute a threat in the literal or practical sense. This does not suggest that hauling Nicholas Maduro into USA federal court is not a worthwhile endeavor if compatible with US law and national interest. However, if the narcotic activities of Nicaragua pose a threat justifying a violent attack, an assault upon Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, and China would be worthy.

And the major threat to hemispheric peace and stability does not presently come from any of those countries, but from the USA.  In recent days, President Trump has threatened both Colombia and Denmark and Little Marco has threated Cuba.  That's not to spank them with narcotics or with rifle toting, hormone-infused MAGAts, but with the most powerful military in history. 

Of course, Trump is little motivated by the proliferation of drugs, as his pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez demonstrates. It's about a lot of oil and rare earth minerals, probably with Donald's expectation of personal profit, as well as satisfying the wet dreams of much of his base by "kicking ass" while Maduro "f'ed around and found out," as Pete Hegseth put it.

Other factors also may have entered into the decision to employ the armed forces because Donald Trump always has an angle, and helping the country he has called "evil" is rarely one of them. James Woods may not understand this, but we can't be sure because he and many others will support any behavior from the most violent and degenerate creature ever to hold public office in this country.



Saturday, January 03, 2026

Conquest


With Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it's often difficult to determine whether he is grossly dishonest or equally naive. Among the interesting remarks he made at the Mar-a-Lago news conference called so that President Trump could congratulate himself and the US military for its raid on Venezuela was "Remember, at the end of day, at its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice and the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job. Now there are broader policy implications here...."

Similarly, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who has the ounce of integrity House Speaker Mike Johnson lacks

said in a statement that he had spoken with Rubio as well and argued Trump's actions wre undertaken as part of "the execution of a valid Department of Justice warrant."

"President Trump's decisive action to disrupt the unacceptable status quo and apprehend Madur. through the exectuion of a valid Department of Justice warrant, is an important first step to bring him to justice for the drug crimes for which he has been indicted in the United States," Thune said.

The kidnapping/arrest- of Nicolas Maduro may be the first step to bring the Venezuelan strongman to justice, but it is only the means to an end. And the Trump Administration is far more concerned with its goal of conquest than it is in prosecuting a drug kingpin.

The President didn't directly say that. The admission- or in his case, the brag- was clear. Donald remarked 

As everyone knows, Venezuela’s oil industry has collapsed for years. Production fell to almost nothing compared to what it should have been. We will bring in our largest U.S. oil companies – the biggest in the world – to invest billions of dollars and repair the severely damaged oil infrastructure....

We will restore production so the nation can generate real revenue again. And we are ready, if necessary, to launch a second and much larger operation. We were prepared for a second wave and expected it might be required.

The President did contend, as noted here, that "oil companies will pay directly for the cost of rebuilding Venezuela's crude infrastructure. But be prepared to be shocked: he added "They will be reimbursed for what they're doing."

Of course, they will. However, that promise is no promise and is not binding. Nonetheless, show Donald that they appreciate the armed forces being activated on their behalf, they may be fully reimbursed. Show Trump personally some love, and it will benefit them- and him. A win-win.  After Trump v. United States, none dare call it bribery.

Over two weeks ago, the extremely conservative Kentucky Republican, Thomas Massie, made more than one good point:

"Venezuela also seized and sold American oil assets, costing us billions," maintained the President, which at least has the virtue of being closer to the truth than most of what he says, an extremely low bar. The nation's President now commingles the interests of Chevron and the USA, a dangerous coupling in any circumstance. And with that President being the King of Graft, what could possibly go wrong?



Thursday, January 01, 2026

Unbothered By Sexual Misconduct


If this was a win, MAGA world surely would hate to see what a loss looks like. Brace yourself for a whale of a job of selective editing:


 HUGE WIN: CNN painfully FORCED to admit President Trump was telling the truth and cut ties with Epstein after Trump learned of Epstein's sexual misconduct at Mar-a-Lago, back in 2003.

There is no "CNN" being "forced to admit President Trump was telling the truth" when he "cut ties with Epsteein after Trump learned of Epstein's sexual misconduct."  Aside from the two conservatives (Pete Seat and Scott Jennings) at the panel discussion, there were two liberals, the sort-of liberal Elie Honig (there for his legal expertise), and host Abby Phillip.

As usual, effectively moderating the discussion and bringing light to the subject, Phillip- in a portion of the subject unsurprisingly omitted by the sycophantic Trump tweeter, notes

Not to quibble too deeply with this but it is interesting to me that Trump- he doesn't ever mention the conduct toward women that is at the hert of the whole Epstein thing, the complaints that came to him from a manger, which is that not that he was taking employees but he was propositioning them. Some of them were very tound and the President doesn't ever seem to mention that or anything about that in all the times he has talked about Epstein. I am confused about that. I don't know why he finds it so hard to acknowledge what we all know, which is that Jeffrey Epstein was a creep and that he was molesting girls and that's what he was prosecuted for. 

The Law of Parsimony (Occam's Razor) suggests that the President finds it hard because he didn't care about the welfare of the young women then, and does not now, either. It is conceivable, though, that he doesn't want to talk about the pattern of molestation by Epstein because those girls or women had been going to Epstein's place all along. In this scenario, Epstein was paying for the hop but had tired of doing so and Trump wasn't having it.

That's highly speculative. However, we do know that when on 7/20/24 Trump was 

asked if the workers who were hired away were young women, Trump responded, "the answer is yes, they were."

"People were taken out of the spa — hired by him — in other words, gone. And other people would come and complain, 'This guy is taking people from the spa,'" Trump said. "I didn't know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, 'Listen, we don't want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa, I don't want them taking people.' And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, 'Out of here.' "

Trump has said that he had given Epstein a warning about poaching employees from him and "threw him out of the place persona non grata" when his friend persisted.  Donald has not stated when the incident occurred. Yet

In 2019, The Washington Post reported about a 2004 bidding war over a Palm Beach oceanfront mansion as driving a wedge between Trump and Epstein. 

The dispute happened months before Palm Beach police began investigating allegations that Epstein was sexually abusing minors...

The mansion entered the market after previous owner and healthcare tycoon-turned-philanthropist Abraham Gosman declared bankruptcy, Palm Beach Daily News reported.

Bankruptcy court acquired the home — dubbed Maison de l'Amitie, or House of Friendship — and put it on the auction block. Trump outbid Epstein, securing the 62,000-square-foot mansion for $41.35 million.

Before the auction, the trustee in the case, Joseph Luzinski, described the showdown as "two very large Palm Beach egos going at it," said The Washington Post's report.

There is little public record of the two men interacting after that, The New York Times reported.

It appears there was contact between Trump and Epstein sometime after Donald decided the "creep" was "persona non grats."  However, that is not absolutely certain because relatively little in the Epstein/Trump relationship has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.  Nonetheless, whatever the reason for the split between these two lowlifes, it was clearly not because of any personal revulsion Donald Trump harbored toward Jeffrey Eptstein's sexual perversion and criminality.



Monday, December 29, 2025

Tripartite



In May, Edward Wong in The New York Times wrote that President Trump's

actions and statements suggest he might be envisioning a world in which each of the three so-called great powers — the United States, China and Russia — dominates its part of the globe, some foreign policy analysts say.

It would be a throwback to a 19th-century style of imperial rule.

Mr. Trump has said he wants to take Greenland from Denmark, annex Canada and re-establish American control of the Panama Canal. Those bids to extend U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere are the clearest signs yet of his desire to create a sphere of influence in the nation’s backyard.

He has criticized allies and talked about withdrawing U.S. troops from around the globe. That could benefit Russia and China, which seek to diminish the American security presence in Europe and Asia. Mr. Trump often praises President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, as strong and smart men who are his close friends.

In March, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius had argued much the same, that

The best assessment of Trump’s strategic “vision” that I’ve seen comes from Alex Younger, a former head of the British intelligence service known as MI6. He said in a Feb. 21 interview on BBC’s “Newsnight” that “we are in a new era where, by and large, international relations aren’t going to be determined by rules and multilateral institutions. They’re going to be determined by strong men and deals"...

Trump seems to envision a new balance of power with three poles: the United States plus Russia and China, whose leaders he sees as kindred spirits. The rest of the world, including the United States’ oldest allies, must fend for itself.

Two months later, as more evidence rolled in, Edward Wang in The New York  Times agreed, writing that President Donald Trump's

actions and statements suggest he might be envisioning a world in which each of the three so-called great powers — the United States, China and Russia — dominates its part of the globe, some foreign policy analysts say.

It would be a throwback to a 19th-century style of imperial rule.

Mr. Trump has said he wants to take Greenland from Denmark, annex Canada and re-establish American control of the Panama Canal. Those bids to extend U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere are the clearest signs yet of his desire to create a sphere of influence in the nation’s backyard.

He has criticized allies and talked about withdrawing U.S. troops from around the globe. That could benefit Russia and China, which seek to diminish the American security presence in Europe and Asia. Mr. Trump often praises President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, as strong and smart men who are his close friends.

Not quite as presciently- it appears- Ignatius had added

European leaders tell me they are so worried about an expansionist Russia that they are prepared to take a strong stand in Ukraine by committing to send troops there to deter further aggression after a ceasefire. The Russians are outraged, but if Europe holds firm, will Trump really take Putin’s side against America’s closest allies? I doubt it.

Doubt no longer. In the months which have followed, Donald repeatedly has taken Russia's side againt Ukraine, pressuring Zelenskyy to give up territory and on a few occasions claiming that Ukraine itself started the war. While the President criticizes NATO, his Administration has advocated "ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a  perpetually expanding alliance."

That attitude throws into doubt the possibility of an agreement ending the Russia-Ukraine war which would give Ukraine significant security guarantees. The President does not view the transatlantic alliance as helpful to his dream of a world dominated by the world's three greatest powers- Russia, China, and the USA. Unfortunately

... the haggling over who gets dominance over what and where would likely come at the expense of (countries other than the USA, China, and Russia).

"Today's major powers are seeking to negotiate a new global order primaraily with each other," Monica Toft, professor of international relations at Tufts University in Massachusetts wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs.

"iIn a scenario in which the United States, China, and Russia all agree that they have a vital interest in avoiding a nuclear war, acknowledging each other's spheres of influence can serve as a mechanism to deter escalation," Toft said.

If that were the caase, "negotiations to end the war in Ukraine could resemble a new Yalta," she added.

Yet the thought of a Ukraine deemed by Trump to be in Russia's sphere is likely to send shivers down the spines of many in Europe- not least in ukraine itself.

"The success or failure of Ukraine to defend its sovereignty is going to have a lot of impact in terms of what the global system ends p looking like a generation from now," Mankoff said.

When Donald Trump forces an end- an unjust end- to the war in eastern Europe, he will have taken a step in promoting Vladimir Putin's plan to gain control over the entire region. "He (Putin) wants to see it happen," President Trump says. We know what Putin wants, and it has been clear since the beginning of this presidential term that Donald Trump wants the same thing.


 


Friday, December 26, 2025

Poppycock


Give this guy from Texas 4th Congressional District a cookie. He's right about mainland China, at least in the past.

Obviously, it is brought into the USA by carters, as Representative Fallon asserts. However, little of it is coming from Venezuela or Columbia. According to the top official at Customs and Border Protection in September

We saw that as China scheduled fentanyl in 2019 [as a class of drugs that are controlled and restricted], the fentanyl production moved to Mexico. The precursors started moving to Mexico, and we started seeing the pills and powder come across the southwest border specifically trafficked mostly by the Sinaloa cartel. Even today, they control that corridor between Mexico and Arizona and California….

As we started looking for precursors based on the intelligence we had garnered from our previous operations, we saw these substances coming into Los Angeles, JFK, and some of the other express hubs. And we also continued to see the pill presses, dies, and molds that are used for producing the fentanyl pills.

The interesting thing about the precursors is that they were coming in transit through the U.S., then down over the southwest border into Mexico, then being used to process the pills, and then being smuggled back north into the U.S. This gave us multiple opportunities to really hit these transnational criminal organizations that are moving the fentanyl.

So somehow the fetanyl is going from China or Mexico to the southwestern USA- then back to Venezuela and on to the USA?  That's doing things the hard way.

Donald doesn't  give a rat's behind about fetanyl, though that's still more negative than his attitude toward cocaine. The Annenberg Publlic Policy Center has reported that.

According to the indictment filed on Jan. 27, 2022, in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, from about 2004 to 2022, (former Honduran president Juan Carlos) Hernández “participated in a corrupt and violent drug-trafficking conspiracy to facilitate the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States.” He received “millions of dollars from multiple drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere, including from the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin Guzman Loera,” the Mexican drug kingpin known as “El Chapo.”

Hernández used the drug money to fund his political campaigns and commit voter fraud, the indictment said. “In exchange, Hernández protected drug traffickers, including his brother and former member of the Honduran National Congress Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado … from investigation, arrest, and extradition; caused sensitive law enforcement and military information to be provided to drug traffickers to assist their criminal activities; caused members of the Honduran National Police and military to protect drug shipments in Honduras; and allowed brutal violence to be committed without consequence.”

Hernández “contributed with his co-conspirators to Honduras becoming one of the largest transshipment points in the world for United States-bound cocaine,” the indictment also said. Loads of cocaine were trafficked through Honduras from Colombia and Venezuela by boat and air.

(The Trump administration has been building up the U.S. military presence in the Caribbean in recent months and striking alleged drug-running boats off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, as we’ve previously written.).

President Trump on November 28 announced that he was handing a full pardon to Hernandez and two days later told reporters

Well, I was told, I was asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup. … The people of Honduras really thought [Hernández] was set up and it was a terrible thing.

He was the president of the country, and they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country." And they said it was a Biden administration setup. And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them.

It's difficult to separate dishonesty and ignorance by GOP members of Congress as this regime continues its reign of terror against whom Donald Trump characterizes as "bloated, fat, and dsigusting" Americans. But there is a tell because there is no such thing as a "narcoterrorist." Transporting narcotics for fun and profit kills a lot of people but does not constitute "terrorism." so if the Republican is railing against "narco-terrorists," the congressman has a complete disregard for the truth, not unlike the President he or she follows blindly.



Wednesday, December 24, 2025

Rest Assured, He's There



I don't know the context of the following statement from Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough, what may have preceded his remark or followed his remark. And the stupid may have been removed from his brain later in the segment. He remarked

So one of the great mysteries all along in this- no what Donald Trump is hiding, not what did he do, deh, deh, deh, deh- why if he's not in these files, which all reporting says he's not, why is he so obsessed on blocking access to the files? Is he trying to protect somebody?


That "somebody" may be Donald Trump himself- worse, it may be a donor. That donor could be directly related to Russia, Saudi Arabia, China or another nation, and the President's connection to him (or them) may be a national security threat. If the association does not have foreign implications, it nevertheless may reveal that Trump is tied to a donor who controls him.

Donald may be protecting Melania Trump in a matter related to her immigration to this country or to her personal past. Rumor has it that she was not, ahem, a virgin when she met Donald. That would prove extremely embarrassing, though that would be the least among possible revelations in the Epstein files.

Trump may have been involved in laundering money for Jeffrey Epstein. One of the documents released on December 23 referred to internal FBI communications following Epstein's arrest in July, 2019 which "asks about the status of what it refers to as '10 co-conspirators," with the response heavily redacted. Trump may have been one of the ten, though there is no evidence that he is.

Nonetheless, Trump may have been involved, directly or indirectly, in the sex trafficking activities of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell Or he may simply have been a client, cheerily having consensual and/or forced sex with numerous women, possibly including juveniles. And his sex may not have been restricted to females, given the (figuratively) patented Trump dance simulating a sexual act while the onetime gay anthem "YMCA"  plays. 



Or it may be a combination of two or more of those items.  The point is, as John Oliver would put it, that we don't know.  The vast majority of the files have not been released (at least not yet) and a tremendous amount which has been disclosed has been heavily redacted.

Notwithstanding Scarborough's remark, there is likely no Epstein "list."  Donald Trump does "not appear on Epstein's list" because, as far as we know, there is no actual list.

Scarborough should know this. He should know also that not all reporting says he's not in the files. Rather, the "reporting" is that no one has accused Trump of breaking any laws.  Nor has he been accused of specific wrongdoing. And that's because

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche informed President Donald Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein that the Department of Justice and the FBI reviewed.

The officials told Trump of their plan not to release any additional documents, the report says, because the material contained child pornography and the personal information of victims.

Maybe, but the odds are that the other reason included the most important to the Justice Department- the repeated invocation of the name "Donald Trump." Those odds are roughly the same as those of the Houston Texans making the NFL playoffs this season. Have patience- it takes a long time to excise the name of a former businessman, actor, and current President when documents are saturated with his name.

But we don't know for sure. We don't know because the Trump Justice Department has been balking all along at releasing the files. And the odds that this is unrelated to Donald Trump being involved in highly unsavory, if not illegal, behavior are approximately equal to the Indianapolis Colts entering the playoffs.


 

    
                                       MERRY CHRISTMAS



Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Late to the Game. And Dishonest.


This woman, a reporter from The Federalist by the name of Brianna Lyman, is slick. This is from CNN's "Saturday Morning Table for Five."

Lyman, referring to the Democratic Party, claims

.... no one in your party cared in 2020 when you guys were changing names of hospitals, parks, schools, streets, everything in the name of George Floyd.  Wikipedia has an entire page called List of name changes due to the George Floyd protests. It's the longest Wikipedia page I've ever seen.

Indeed, it is long, though if it's the longest she ever has seen, she has to get out more. But notice it's called (emphasis mine) the "List of name changes due to the George Floyd protests."  It's not the "List of things changed in the name of George Floyd."

Yet, she contended that names of hospitals, parks, schools, streets, everything" were changed in the name of George Floyd."

The number of things changed to anything "George Floyd" did not hover far above zero. The reason for name changes varied considerably. In many cases, it was done to avoid the word "Dixie" or something else relating to the Confederacy. Many times, there was something apparently racist or otherwise bigoted in the original name. In other instances, there was an effort to eliminate an ethnic stereotype, whether against blacks, South Asians, or tribal people.  

One guest, Cari Champion, pointed out

I think that this country had a racial reckoning and they understood — Please let me finish because I let you finish — They had a racial reckoning and they understood that this country had done some things that were very unfair, especially to marginalized [people], especially to Black people, and they were giving tributes and statues to people who were slave owners who were considered heroes at one point.

Lyman responded, sarcastically, "Like Jefferson and Washington,"  a legitimate remark because there were a few- very few- instances involving statues of the two ex-Presidents. However, as they continued in disagreement, Champion advised her "The reality is that they may have over corrected but right now they're over correcting in another way."

That is clearly what the Trump Administration is doing. What no one, understandably but unfortunately, advised Lyman is that during the height of the Floyd protests, even Republicans and conservatives largely avoided criticizing the movement, perhaps because it is difficult to criticize something called "Black Lives Matter." (Tucker Carlson was a notable exception.) It started to become fashionable only in retrospect for the right to criticize those 2020 protests. Few conservatives are able to claim that they were critical in real time.

My favorite entry on the Wikipedia page The Federalist reporter lied to us about pertained to a band called "Slaves." It announced on 6/25/20 that it would become "Rain City Drive" because "As obstinate supporters of the BLM Movement, we cannot continue to tie our music and our positive message toa word associated with such negative weight and hurt."

That was commendable, though as a non-obstinate supporter of the BLM movement, I would have thought it obvious that "Slaves" was not a good name for a band. If nothing else, it trivialized a reprehensible aspect of American history.

The name "Slaves" for a band was never wise and trivialized a reprehensible aspect of American history. Though a non-obstinate supporter of the BLM movement, I realized, as anyone should have, that "Slaves" (or "Enslaved People") was a bad move and needed to be shelved. 

Perhaps Brianna Lyman would agree, assuming that she actually read that Wikipedia page she wanted everyone to believe proved that Democrats were fond of "George Floyd" this and "George Floyd" that. It's impossible to determine whether she did even skim the page. However, conservatives have learned over the last few years that attaching "Democrats" to "George Floyd" is a winning ploy, even though at the time those protests were taking place, most of them kept their mouths conveniently shut.




The New Pledge of Allegiance

Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez infamously stated "I have a local city councilman that has this saying 'Woke 1...