WE WILL RUN THE COUNTRY

It was just weeks ago that I asked the question, is America stumbling into a war with Venezuela?  Well, today I got my answer: Venezuelan Prime Minister Nicolás Maduro and his wife were taken into custody by the US military this morning.  They are soon going to face drug related charges. Before the attack  President Donald Trump  gave no acknowledgment to congress, nor any real explanation to the American public about it.  It could be seen as an illegal assault, given that only congress has the right to declare war on another country.  At the very least, Trump could have looked at the polls that showed strong majorities of Americans opposing military action in Venezuela and addressed the people's concerns before the attack.  But instead he just acted without warning or approval, behaving like the king he thinks he is.

After the assault, Trump did address the nation, but he was frustratingly vague in both his explanation for the attack or what happens next.  Ominously, he said that  the United States would “run the country” until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be made.  He even mentioned the possibility of sending American troops to Venezuela. 

Clearly, the taking of Maduro was a relatively easy thing to do, but what lies ahead will almost certainly not be.  Venezuela is a country of almost thirty million people, and is around twice the size of California. Just what will it take for America to be able to "run the country"?  If we do send troops to the country, will this be seen a major betrayal from a president who ran on a platform of not starting wars?

The important thing to remember here is that, despite what Trump says, Maduro was not taken out because of his ties to drug dealing (most of the drugs from Venezuela go to Europe instead of the US), he was taken out to give the US access to Venezuela's massive oil reserves.  Although one other reason is that Secretary of State Marco Rubio may see  removing Maduro as a stepping stone towards eventually overthrowing the Communist government of Cuba, an ally of Venezuela.  Also, Homeland Security Advisor and raging xenophobe Stephen Miller reportedly sees  a war with Venezuela as an excuse to use the 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act, a way to legally deport hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans currently living in the US.  So perhaps it's no surprise that Trump wanted this attack, as it allowed him to look tough on drugs, Communism and immigration while also gaining access to more oil for American oil companies, all at once

Look, now that the die is cast, I hope that everything goes the way that Trump says it will; that an orderly transition to a democratically elected leadership takes place without the need for American troops to occupy the country.  But I don't think it's likely.  Just how bad this all turns out remains to be seen.

THE WORST

 

Now that the first year of Donald Trump's term is coming to a close, instead of trying to cover the dizzying amount of terrible things that he has done, from Tariffs to ICE raids, I've decided to focus on the one thing that he did that may stand as the largest art of cruelty ever committed by any president.  Or, at the very  least, the worst thing that any modern president has ever done.

This requires a little history: the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, was a program first created by the Kennedy administration back in 1961.  It's goal was a humanitarian one: to provide food, medicine, educational assistance and  other forms of aid to places in the world in desperate need.  It's goals were not entirely altruistic as it was seen as part of the cold war, with the assumption that countries getting aid from the US would be less likely to fall under Communist influence.

Over the years the agency has endured under presidents from both parties.  In fact, it was Republican, President George W Bush who worked with USAID and other  agencies to create the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR,  a program that is believed to have saved millions of lives all around the world.

While it delivered aid  around the world, the USAID agency only cost the tax payers a pittance; the amount of our federal budget going to the program rarely reached more than one percent in any year since it began.  But, sadly, the American public have never understood just how little we were spending on aid to foreign countries.  According to Our World in Data, a Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll done earlier this year found that most Americans thought that aid to foreign countries made up around a quarter of our budget, with only 30% correctly saying that was less than 5%.  

Given the public's ignorance on this issue, it's no surprise that USAID became a prime target when Trump allowed ketamine addled narcissist Elon Musk and his band of inexperienced tech bros known as DOGE to start cutting at what was seen as unnecessary government waste earlier this year. While DOGE was wildly incompetent and released a list of its so called accomplishments that was riddled with errors and exaggerations, it was, tragically, able to successfully gut the USAID program.  In a moment that was truly staggering in its callous casualness, Musk sent out a tweet saying that he had thrown USAID into the "wood chipper".  He would then go on to constantly lie about the devastating effects of those cuts, even though every  analysis said that they were absolutely that.   

How devastating?  Well, with 83% of its budget now slashed, a study from the medical journal, the Lancet released last June said that the death toll by 2030 could be as high as fourteen million.  Think of that.  All just to save less than one percent of our national budget.  Or to put it in raw numbers, the country spent around thirty five billion dollars on USAID in 2024 before Trump came to office,   Last year the Trump administration gave over thirty billion to farmers affected by his tariffs and twenty billion to bail out the right wing Argentinian  government.  In other words, DOGE and Trump cut USAID because it was an easy target that wouldn't effect most Americans, not because it wasted money.

Looking back over the various presidents that have ruled in my lifetime, I am hard pressed to find anything so stunningly destructive to the world than what Musk and Trump have done by cutting USAID.  Together the world's richest man and the world's most powerful man have ended programs that will result in the death of millions of the world's most vulnerable people and shrugged it off as if it was nothing.  If there were any justice in the world, Musk and Trump would remembered as the men responsible for negligent genocide.

WAR CRIMES

 

Recently the Trump administration has continued to bomb boats from Venezuela that it claims were carrying drugs on them.  The explanation given  is that  the drug dealers were enemies in our war on drugs. After the first bombing back in September happened, Geoffrey Corn, a retired uniformed lawyer who was the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, said “I think it’s a terrible precedent.  We’ve crossed a line here.”  Sadly, the Trump administration continued the bombing, even as some Republicans in congress balked at the news that the first bombing attack  hit the boat twice, killing two survivors who were hanging onto the wreckage when  the second bombing hit, in open violation of the rules of engagement.

While Trump has been claiming that all of the attacks are legitimate and  even claimed  that “Every boat that we knock out ,we save 25,000 American lives.”  the notion that these attacks are justified as part of our  nations's war on drugs is absurd; for one thing, even if the boats were bound for America, they would have carried cocaine and not the far more dangerous fentanyl, which comes across the Mexican border and not from Venezuela, so the notion that the bombings saved so many American lives is preposterous.  Another point could be made that ferrying illegal drugs is not a capitol offense worthy of the death penalty, and that having the US harbor patrol stop and search the boats would not only have prevented the loss of lives, it would have allowed the drug dealers to be interrogated, which could lead to more arrests.  And to make matters really quite insane, last month Trump pardoned  Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who had been convicted of smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US and was about to serve a forty five year sentence.  So much for cracking down on illegal drug deals!

It's clear that what Trump wants is not to blow up a few boats, but to force Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power. To that end he has already mobilized the US Navy around that country and recently had a Venezuelan  oil tanker seized.

Now, it must be said that Maduro is a corrupt leader who has jailed opponents, wrecked Venezuela's  economy and caused millions to flee the country since he took power in 2013.  And, yes, it appears that he has cut deals with illegal drug traders, although he denies this.  So a case could be made that removing him may be the right thing to do, although it really appears that Trump is more interested in getting access to Venezuelan oil reserves than in taking out a dictator.  Either way,  Trump and his administration seem to have come to  the conclusion that Marduro must go.  However, as we found out in the Iraq war of 2004, it's much easier to remove a corrupt leader than it is  to replace one while also trying to  stabilize a country militarily.  It is therefore understandable for the American public to expect the Trump administration to explain to us just why we need to possibly risk American lives to force Madero out.  Even though I always opposed the Iraq war, at least George W Bush's administration attempted to make as strong a case as possible for the invasion.  The Trump administration is just gearing up for some kind of attack with little to no communication with the public.  This is especially galling given that recent polls show a whopping 70% of the American public oppose such an invasion.  

One of the many troubling things about the second Trump term is his administration's attitude that they know what's best without even bothering to inform the publics about it's motivations.  For example,  when Trump was questioned about pardoning that drug lord, he vaguely shrugged it off by saying he heard that  Hernández had been framed by Biden, as if that was a legitimate answer.  Of course, Trump is really more the cult leader of the Republican party than he is a president, and like any cult leader, he hates to be questioned about his decisions.  And so the country may soon be in another war based on an oil grab carried out by a president who couldn't care less about the consequences.  We continue to live in unprecedented and horrifying time in this country.

NICK FUENTES IS NOTHING NEW

 

Recently, there's been a conflict in the right wing media world, with popular right wing podcaster Tucker Carlson having another popular figure in right wing media, Nick Fuentes on his show.  Fuentes is, putting it bluntly, an utterly unrepentant bigoted, antisemitic misogynist.  He has denied the Holocaust, said that "black people should be in prison for the most part" and advocated for taking away women's right to vote.  Despite all of that, Carlson's two hour interview was full of mostly softball questions, showing just how much hard right, despicable beliefs have become mainstream in the rightwing MAGA movement.

Or have they?  At first, Kevin Roberts, the leader of the right wing Heritage Foundation released a statement about the interview saying that “We will always defend truth.We will always defend America, and we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda."  But this caused enormous division within his own group, and he later released another statement on X, coming out strongly against  Fuentes's antisemitism, but leaving Carlson off the hook for having him on.  But, given the late nature of Roberts's statement, the Antisemitism Task Force has already cut ties with the Heritage Foundation and several members of the group have left in disgust. Now lines are being drawn on the right about what to do about Fuentes and his supporters of mostly young men known as"Groypers,"

All of this reminds me of something that happened decades ago: David Duke, an unrepentant former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, who's views on race and religion sounded just like Fuentes's, became a prominent political figure in the state of  Louisiana in the 80's and 90's.  After running a stunt campaign for president in 1988, Duke actually won a Louisiana House seat in 1989.  He then tried to run for the US senate and then governor, and while he lost both times, he did surprisingly well in the polls. (As he would proudly point out, he received a majority of the white vote in his run to be governor.) To be fair,  many Republicans condemned Duke at the time, but his stands on the big issues of the day were not really much different than theirs.

Like Fuentes does now, Duke's surprising popularity with a segment of the Republican base shows the ugly underbelly of bigotry that has always existed since Richard Nixon first developed the racially coded Southern Strategy in 1968.  While I'm certainly not saying that all Republicans are bigots, what I am saying is that the pro business, libertarian wing of the party (the Mitt Romney style Republicans) have, in the past few decades, relied on the support of Republican blue collar voters who do not vote the way they do because of, say, supply side economics.  Instead they back the GOP because the party has convinced them that the Democrats only care about people who aren't white or heterosexual.  All that Duke and Fuentes have done is loudly state what Republican politicians have been dog whistling for decades.  

While I'm glad to see some members of the right coming out forcefully against Fuentes, I can't help but feel it's a little too little and a little too late.  Where we these people when Donald Trump had Fuentes over for dinner at Mar A Lago just before he started his 2024 campaign?  Why aren't they going after Carlson as much as Fuentes?  It's clear that, as with David Duke in the 90's, the GOP wants to appear to condemn the opinions of Fuentes while keeping the support of his voters.  It's dark, cynical politics, the kind that has worked well for the conservative movement in this country and very well may continue to for years to come.

NEW LEVELS OF CORRUPTION

 

Another week, another set of new lows for President Donald Trump.  Much media attention has been given to the fact that, to construct an enormous golden ballroom, his administration has demolished much of the East Wing of the Oval Office.  This was after he promised not to alter the existing architecture, but then what do you expect from an inveterate liar like Trump?  And this is nothing new for him; way back in 1980, when he constructing Trump Tower in New York, he made a deal with the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art to donate some artistic statuary from the building that was being torn down to make way for his tower.  But then he went back on his word and had the statuary demolished, because of course he did.  Now, while I certainly don't care for the way that Trump is ripping apart a publicly funded building to turn into his own gaudy, gold edged playpen, and I'm also not fond of the way that he's raising funds for the work from wealthy companies trying to curry favor with him, I also think that in the grand scheme of things, this is hardly the worst thing he's done just this week. In other words, I agree with former Barack Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, who publicly said "He can demolish the entire White House, raze the whole thing to the ground, if he takes ICE off the streets."

Much worse than that construction is his recent contention that he deserves recompense for past investigations into his 2016's campaign ties to Russia and his refusal to return classified documents after his first exit from the White House.  The amount he's asking for is 230 million dollars, a staggering number even give how big his legal bills may have been, or how accurate he was about the illegitimacy of those investigations.  And unlike that ballroom, the money would come directly from the taxpayers.  Even Trump himself seemed a little awestruck by his own corruption here, pointing out that it would be he himself who finalizes this huge pay out to his own bank account.  Sadly, given how much he has already corrupted the Justice Department by filling it with his bootlicking lackeys, he very well may get that money.  

And he would get that money even after ProPublica reported that at least 170 American citizens have been held against their will by immigration agents since Trump took office in January, some of whom faced physical violence, and none of whom will be able to sue the government for false arrest.  Yes we now live in a country where our billionaire president can ask for almost a quarter of a billion dollars  to cover his legal expenses for past investigations of his wrongdoings, but American citizens wrongly arrested can't get any compensation for being held in brutal conditions.  What a time to be an American.

Another utterly corrupt moment came when Trump pardoned the world's wealthiest cryptocurrency owner, Changpeng Zhao.  In 2023, back when there was some sanity in this country, Zhao's cryptocurrency exchange known as  Binance, did not have decent compliance systems, which allowed terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, to move money on his platform. Zhao pleaded guilty to laundering and served four months in prison.  After his release from prison, Zhao has praised Trump and Binance has made deals with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto start-up, deals that the New York Times estimates could make the Trump family tens of millions of dollars this year.   The pardon will make it easier for Zhao to run his company after he stepped down while admitting his guilt in 2023.  Once again, Trump has used the power of the presidential pardon to reward his friends and business associates while lining his own pockets while his Republicans allies in congress ignore it.  And to add to the whole terribleness of this, just imagine if a Democrat pardoned someone who made it easier for terrorist organizations to move money.  Again, what a time to be an American.  

All of this is happening as Trump continues to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies like Leticia James and James Comey and sends National Guard troops into states that don't want them and separates families and  tears communities apart with his ICE raids.  He can't even get inflation under control, with his tariffs driving prices up for American consumers, while his recently passed budget bill will raise healthcare premiums for millions of Americans. His second term  is proving to be a corrupt disaster for the country, and he hasn't even been in office a year yet.  And that's not even considering that former Trump advisor Steve Bannon says that there's a plan for him to run again in 2028, the 22nd. Amendment of the Constitution be damned.  At the recent No Kings rally, protestors chanted against the rise of fascism in this country, and with good reason.  Sadly, we do seem to be heading that way.    

WAR AND PEACE

 

During President Donald Trump's first term, I found almost all of his policies and actions morally and politically bankrupt.  But even I had to admit that Operation Warp Speed, the policy that lead to the quick development of a vaccine for Covid, was a good thing.  Even Trump could get some things right, even if he also once stated that injecting bleach was a good idea.  (He later tried to say that his comment about bleach was sarcastic, but it didn't sound that way at the time!)

My feelings about Operation Warp Speed are similar to  what's going on now in the Middle East, with a cease fire between the Israeli government and the terrorist group Hamas finally being negotiated. This is, of course, a good thing, with the brutal war that began over two years ago leaving the territory of Gaza decimated with tens of thousands of casualties.  If Trump played a role in getting that cease fire, then good for him.  If it holds, then perhaps he should get a Nobel Peace Prize next year (although he may find holding both sides to the agreement may be difficult).

So Trump is helping to bring peace to the Middle East.  Good.  Too bad he's spreading hatred in our country and other parts of the world.  About a month ago, the Trump administration bombed a boat from the country of Venezuela that, the administration claimed, was carrying drugs to the US.  Since then, three more boats from Venezuela have been blown up by our government, each allegedly carrying drugs.  No evidence has been given by the Trump administration for what are essentially acts of war against a foreign country.  

The idea that blowing up a few boats could make a serious dent in the flow of illegal drugs to the US is laughable.  So what is the administration up to?  Well, there has been an amassing of American warships near Venezuela recently, and it's possible that Trump wants to move against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro,  Now, according to the US State Department, Maduro is a brutal authoritarian who has repressed the country and decimated the economy.  But removing him from power would be difficult, and if that's Trump ultimate goal, he should state that openly to the American public instead of dragging us slowly into a war.  

But what Trump is doing in Venezuela is dwarfed by his corruption in our country itself.  Yes, the man who has repeatedly said that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize has pushed our country to the brink of out right military conflict.  First, he has sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into our cities on a huge scale, with blue cities like Chicago and New York being targeted.  As if that weren't enough, Trump has also also ordered National Guard troops into blue cities like Washington DC and Portland Oregon, despite those cities leaders saying they aren't needed,  under the absurd notion that violent crime or out of control protests against ICE agents are taking place there.  In actuality, violent crime, after surging during the pandemic, has dropped precipitously all around the country, including in our cities.  And Trump's characterization of the city of Portland as being “war-ravaged”  because of ICE protests is based on a Fox News report on September 5th that showed footage of violent protests in Portland from five years ago!   

Hopefully, this will not become a self fulfilling prophecy, with increased military presence leading to increased protests that may become violent, leading to even more military presence.  So far, Portland seems to resisting the bait, with recent protests being low level and featuring people in animal suits to show how silly the whole thing is.  (Go Portland!).  But we must not forget what is going on here: our president is using the deportation of undocumented immigrants and the specter of violent crime and protests to use ICE and the national guard as his own personal army.  Just how far he's willing to push this kind of. power grab is unknown, but frightening. (Will he try to repress voter turnout in blue cities in the 2026 midterms?)  As is so often the case with Trump, we are in uncharted territory here, and the future looks grim.

THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

 

Since the Democrats in congress refused to sign onto a bill fully funding the government last Tuesday, the federal government has shut down non essential programs.  This isn't surprising; the use of a government shutdown as a last chance attempt by a  minority party to gain something politically have been around since the 1980's, and it was really turbocharged in the 90's when Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich called for one that lasted 21 days (before that they usually lasted only a day or two).

Shut downs are a tricky thing with the public, who usually say that they want congress to accomplish things, but then are divided over just what they want done.  Gingrich's shutdown was seen as a failure for him, cementing his image as a bomb throwing extremist, especially because he called for it more out of pique than any actual political issue (during a flight on Air Force One, then President Bill Clinton did not allow him to sit in the front of the plane or exit from the front).

The last shutdown was made by the Democratic party in 2019, and it lasted a whopping 35 days, making it the longest ever.  The subject was immigration, with the Democrats refusing to pay for President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico and Trump eventually giving in and removing funding for the wall from the budget.  

This time the Democrats are trying to prevent cuts in Obamacare spending that will result in the healthcare premiums for millions of Americans going up, with some even doubling.  The Republican party has countered by saying that the Democrats want to use federal funds to provide healthcare for undocumented immigrants.  Both sides are clearly playing up to what are seen as their strongest issues, with Democrats defending people's healthcare and Republicans bashing undocumented (or "illegal") immigrants.  For the record, the Republicans are straight up lying about the federal spending funding healthcare for the undocumented, but it's a powerful lie.

Personally, I think the Democrats are right to stand up to Trump and the Republicans over this issue, even though shut downs are always messy.  Democratic voters have felt powerless ever since Trump took office again and started moving the country towards an autocratic system.  (I never thought in my lifetime that we would have masked government agents racially profiling people and then  grabbing them off the street in this country,  but here we are!).  Standing up to Trump and shutting down the government is the least that the Democrats can do, and using healthcare costs, a simple, relatable issue, makes sense.  And the fact that Republicans have resorted to lying about healthcare for the undocumented instead of actually defending the spending cuts on their own supposed merit shows how little they have to stand on here.  Put simply, the Democrats want Americans to not have to spend more money on their healthcare, and Republicans don't, even if they won't admit it.  (Bernie Sanders and  Acacia Ocasio-Cortez explained it all well in this this 3 minute video

That said, Trump is using the shutdown as an excuse to fire more government workers and cut already appropriated spending going to blue cities and states, engaging in the same kind of revenge based policies that have always driven him.   But Trump was already doing these things, and many of those fired workers have already sued him in court, so he's not really getting that much out of it.

The irony here is that the Democrats are actually doing the Republicans a favor; if the Dems had just let the healthcare cost increases pass, angry voters would have blamed the Republicans for being in power and voted against them strongly in the upcoming midterms.  But the Dems, as weak and ineffectual as they may seem, actually care about voters who aren't rich and want to make their lives better, even the ones in red states.  Hopefully, they will win this shutdown with some kind of compromise from the Republicans, because this issue is really a moral one.