When you think it's 2025 but it's really just 1987 all over again

 

In addition to noncombatant drug runners, what Trump is executing is this magnificent old tree to make room for his stupid new $200 million ballroom

 

There's a killer on the loose in the Caribbean

Military Strikes Second Venezuela Drug Ship Headed to the U.S.

Trump Says Military Hit THIRD Drug Boat From Venezuela...

Uniparty Trump hides behind the skirts of the 2001 anti-terror legislation to murder so-called terrorists near Venezuela after cutting and running from the Houthis in the Red Sea

<insert tough guy image here>

MEXICO CITY — U.S. forces could have stopped the boat that officials say was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, but President Donald Trump chose instead to destroy it, killing 11 people on board, to send a deterrent message to traffickers. ...

The action was a dramatic escalation for the U.S. in its fight against drug traffickers. Lawmakers and legal analysts questioned the legality of launching a lethal strike against civilians in international waters outside of an armed conflict.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the strike was “conducted against the operations of a designated terrorist organization and was taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations,” an apparent reference to the 2001 authorization for the use of military force enacted by Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that year. It authorizes the use of force against the perpetrators of the al-Qaeda attacks and to prevent “future acts of international terrorism.” Various lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully for years to repeal the measure, including Vice President JD Vance, who as a senator in 2023 co-sponsored the End Endless Wars Act. ...

The U.S. Coast Guard sometimes shoots out the engines of go-fast boats during maritime interdictions, the former agent said, but killing the crew is new for the United States. ...

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, said the strike violated international law. The U.S. is not in armed conflict with Venezuela or its criminal elements, she noted, which means it violated the suspects’ right to life. ...

Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the attack “murder.”

“We have been capturing civilians transporting drugs for decades without killing them,” Petro said. “Those who transport drugs are not the big drug lords, but very poor young people from the Caribbean and the Pacific. ...

 More. 

Elon Musk's hair sample for fentanyl, ketamine, etc. comes up negative

 George Floyd wouldn't have died with such results.

 

 

One of these days the parcel drones won't be carrying simply what they carry now, which will be a fateful turning point for this country

 

Comrade Trump to slash drug prices for the people in latest attack on predatory capitalist bigpharma pigs

Trump to sign order to cut some U.S. drug prices to match lower ones abroad 

Trump signs order aiming to cut some U.S. drug prices to match lower ones abroad

 

Nature is self-cleansing

 Cannabis users 6 times more likely to have heart attack, study shows...

Just a reminder that theatre is exactly what this is, starring Mexico, Canada, and Donald Trump

 Sound familiar?

Trump announces 25% tariffs on Mexico on Saturday, reverses himself before lunch on Monday lol

 

 Stocks that got hit the most from Trump’s tariffs before the Mexico reprieve

... Shares of companies spanning the auto, industrial, retail and beverage industries with international supply chains were hit particularly hard. ... The president said Monday that he’s pausing the Mexico tariffs for one month after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to immediately send 10,000 soldiers to her country’s border to prevent drug trafficking.

The country which can't stop the drug cartels from operating unchecked within its own borders is going to stop drug traffic to the USA because it puts its troops closer to our border?

Phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla.

Trump's tariff gambit has little to do with fentanyl but everything to do with increasing revenues on the backs of consumers so that he can pass his temporary tax cut package and not increase deficits

 It's complete madness. It's Donald Trump: "Everything will cost more but I'm cutting your taxes!"

 Wolfgang Munchau, here:

Economically, his tariff war will act like a tax on US consumers. The increased costs are inevitably borne by the consumers. But, as a form of rebalancing, it will raise a lot of revenue for the US treasury and together with the shrinking of the federal government, may well end up lowering the budget deficit and strengthening the US current account balance. Of course, there will be repercussions that could push in the other direction: the dollar might rise; the world might plunge into recession. But the truth is we have no experience of what happens when the largest economy on earth, with the dominating global reserve currency, imposes massive tariffs on its trading partners.

Munchau thinks Trump will win his tariff war. I do not. Munchau overestimates Trump's political support at home, and underestimates the fickleness of the US electorate. Continued inflation will throw sand into the gears of this gambit and sow discontent.

Control of the US House is everything, and Trump barely has it. He has two years and is already blowing it.

RFK Jr gets a nicotine fix during Senate testimony

Yeah, that's what we want to see in our next Secretary of Health.

Ciga-reetes, and heroin, and wild, wild Olivia Nuzzis, they'll drive you crazy, they'll drive you insane.

 

Some Americans abuse drugs so everyone must pay 25% more for avocado toast

 

Trump tariffs will increase costs of fruits, vegetables, potatoes, and grains, among a hellish host of things

 

... The sweeping tariff could make more expensive a host of items that the U.S. imports from its neighbors. Among the common Mexican imports that will now get pricier to bring into the country: fruits, vegetables, beer, liquor and electronics. And from Canada: potatoes, grains, lumber and steel. ...

Trump is enacting the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to respond to “extraordinary threat,” which Trump has identified as a fentanyl and drug crisis that he alleges China, Mexico, and Canada facilitate. ...

More.

Because some Americans use illegal drugs, Trump is punishing all Americans.

Makes sense, right?

I mean George Floyd's blood fentanyl level was fatal and we lit the nation's cities on fire because of it, so yeah, we deserve it.

Drudge is right: Former heroin addict up for health boss

 

I maintain that Elon is on something this morning

 

The funniest thing about the H-1B controversy is that no one can even spell it, including Roger Simon

 

 Same-sex-marriage enthusiast (((Roger Simon))) says our young people are more backward than the young people of foreign countries, which is exactly the same sort of sneering condescension displayed by federal hog trough feeder Elon Musk and big pharma swindler Vivek Ramaswamy.

People like Roger, who is also a Freudian, worship at the altar of immigrants, "who have built much of this country":

Our educational system is too slow for the pace of tech, students finally learning what they need to know in graduate school when young people in other countries are already utilizing the latest ever-changing tech developments as teenagers.

Apparently our educational system has also failed Roger. He spells it H1-B throughout.

The Great Fake H1-B Controversy

Roger Simon, Substack

House Ethics Draft Report on Trump's withdrawn AG candidate Matt Gaetz concludes Gaetz was a very bad boy despite his denials

 The House Ethics Committee gathered evidence that former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida paid multiple women for sex, including a 17-year-old high school junior, used illegal drugs like cocaine and ecstasy and obstructed efforts by Congress to investigate his conduct, according to a draft of its findings obtained by Just the News.

“The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress," stated the draft of the report slated to be released  this week.

The draft report also said it did not find evidence that Gaetz had engaged in sex trafficking as some had alleged, concluding that all the women who traveled with Gaetz out of their home states did so voluntarily even if they accepted payments for sex. ...

More. 

"Tens of thousands of dollars" were involved 2017-2020.

Donald Trump is already hard at work making long lists of all the things he's not going to accomplish as president, which he'll foolishly fritter away his time on

 Ten points about The Swamp.

Seven points about The War on the Drug Cartels.

Trump's saying all this stuff and we don't even know yet if Republicans will win the US House, where they have 214 seats as of right now and lead narrowly in 8 undecided races. If they win them all they'll have 222 seats, with 218 needed for the majority.

If not, well that'll be the end of all ambition, now won't it?

222 at best is a very narrow margin to accomplish anything anyway, a mere continuation of the status quo where Republicans in the House must tread lightly to keep the caucus unified with a very similarly sized narrow majority (220).

What kind of sweep was this? Once again the Trump movement . . . isn't.

It would be easy to call this stuff hubris from Trump. Let's just say he still hasn't learned anything about how to accomplish anything of relatively permanent value. He has NO priorities when everything is a priority. He is, once again, unserious.

The Senate will be in Republican hands, so we'll at least get more judicial appointments who might advance traditional American principles of law and order.

The scuttlebutt is that the first agenda item in Congress will be making Trump's expiring tax reform permanent.

I can imagine him having to waste the entire first year on this. He'd be better off quickly settling for its extension for another ten years under reconciliation rules, and then move along smartly to immigration and energy reforms before the midterms are upon us in 2026, after which he'll be the lamest of lame ducks.

If there's any hope of boosting GDP and improving everyone's pocketbook they've got to make energy reform the priority. And mere immigration enforcement solves an untold number of other problems which bedevil the country, like illegal drugs, crime, and social spending.

Spending bills will come as they will, and should simply aim to starve the federal government of money to shrink it, as could have been the case last time but nothing changed. The beast grows naturally because permanent spending programs are indexed to inflation. That isn't going to be stopped. Growing the economy to pay the bills is therefore job one.

I'm expecting very little positive from this lot, but I do hope J. D. Vance will emerge at the end of it to take us to a better future.

Democrats who say they fear Trump because he's an authoritarian are absolutely comic. Watch for rogue judges to hamstring him just like last time, and Trump will bluster and fume and things will simply muddle along.

But, of course, unforeseen events like wars have a way of intruding and making mooks of us all. Let's hope Trump can finally make a deal to end and prevent them.

Now Kamala Harris wants to legalize marijuana to win election after putting 1,900 in jail for it in California

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/11/kamala-harris-prosecuting-marijuana-cases/

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/01/harris-the-pro-cannabis-candidate-the-industry-isnt-convinced.html