The Empire Strikes Back

[Sue U]

Trump, of course, famously does not drink alcohol because his brother died an alcoholic. I'm curious how much alcohol Trump has sold - we can still get Trump branded whisky and as a hotelier he probably sold a bottle or two. I think he has done a good job in staying off the booze himself but I wonder what his motive was/is for selling all that alcohol despite knowing its capacity for harm. El Chapo, according to some accounts, did not himself use the drugs he so willingly supplied. Which places Trump and El Chapo on roughly the same moral footing.

Of course, Trump also just pardoned the former president of Honduras who was serving a 45-year sentence after being convicted in a U.S. court for drug trafficking. The hypocrisy is so monumental and the corruption so flagrant that Trump surely believes he will never suffer consequences for any of it. And so far he's been right about that.

[BoSoxGal]

Trump is the classic addict from a family of addicts who looks in the mirror and because of his disordered personality, sees only that he’s not an alcoholic like his brother and doesn’t see that he’s just a different kind of addict addicted to different substances but no less a mess than the brother daddy ‘loved’ but was never pleased by. Trump is the brother daddy never loved and was never pleased by.

I have moments of feeling a teeny tiny bit of empathy for Trump because he is very much a monster made, not born. But he is nevertheless a monster and at 80 he’s been choosing to be a monster for a very long time.

[MajGenl.Meade]

What both she-persons wrote.

[liberty]

Two comments were made here lately, and I'll let the individuals identify themselves if they wish. One said it's not slavery because drug users know what they're getting into. Well, the same could be said for the boat drivers: they know they're going to war, they know we're going to go after them, we're going to try to destroy their boats. So, in essence, it's their own fault.

Someone else said, "The military is sinking fishing boats?" Do fishing boats travel up to 80 miles an hour Nonstop for over 1000 miles. They must be going after some awfully fast fish

[Burning Petard]

Sorry, but I doubt there is any boat that can go 80MPH for a thousand miles non-stop. I can imagine a boat that can go that fast for perhaps five minutes, and then continue non-stop at about 15knots for a total of a thousand miles. I know there are professional Bass Fishing boats that will do a sustained 80mph on calm water, but nothing like a thousand miles non-stop. I am reminded of the old marketing tactic "deep discounts, up to 50% off. Which really means anything but it will be less than 50%. I quote the Wikipedia information on Go-Fast boats also called Cigarette boats, used in open water long distance races in the Caribbean:

A typical go-fast is laid-up using a combination of fibreglass, kevlar and carbon fibre, using a deep "V" style offshore racing hull ranging from 6.1 to 15.2 metres (20 to 50 ft) long, narrow in beam, and equipped with two or more powerful engines, often totalling more than 750 kilowatts (1,000 hp). The boats can typically travel at speeds over 80 knots (150 km/h; 92 mph) in calm waters, over 50 knots (93 km/h) in choppy waters, and maintain 25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph) in the average 1.5-to-2.1-metre (5 to 7 ft) Caribbean seas. They are heavy enough to cut through higher waves, although slower.

These boats are difficult to detect by radar except on flat calm seas or at close range. The United States Coast Guard and the DEA found them to be stealthy, fast, seaworthy, and very difficult to intercept using conventional craft. Due to this, Coast Guards have developed their own high-speed craft and use helicopters equipped with anti-materiel rifles used to disable engines of fleeing boats. The US Coast Guard go-fast boat is a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) equipped with radar and powerful engines. The RHIB is armed with several types of non-lethal weapons and an M240 GPMG.

End of quote. Please note the US Coast Guard is equipped to disable these boats, recover whatever cargo is on board, and arrest the humans aboard.
Also they don't need a gazillion dollar mother ship or similar priced missile to do it. The 'flood' of drugs coming in from Venezuela is less than 5% of the amount coming in from Mexico around the big beautiful wall and through the closed border.

snailgate.

[Joe Guy]

......One said it's not slavery because drug users know what they're getting into. Well, the same could be said for the boat drivers: they know they're going to war, they know we're going to go after them, we're going to try to destroy their boats. So, in essence, it's their own fault......

I said that drug users aren't anything like slaves because they choose to take drugs.

The "boat drivers' are alleged drug runners. Declaring a war on drugs doesn't give the government the legal authority to murder people.

[Burning Petard]

Remember this Commander -in-Chief (before he had that title) proudly said he could stand on the street in New York City, shoot random people and he would not lose a single vote. 'Course now he would have to borrow the gun from one of his Secret Service guards, because as a convicted felon, he cannot purchase one.

snailgate

[Big RR]

Well, the same could be said for the boat drivers: they know they're going to war

Still using the BS "war" analogy. By this reasoning we could execute the poor to destroy poverty in the "war" on poverty, or kill even shoplifters taking a pack of gum, in the "war" on crime. No damn due process, no need for courts, just the ability to kill based on the executive's say so. That's really the kind of country you want to live in?

Continue along these lines and we eventually will have a real war against the president; and if this be treason, make the most of it. People have fought long and hard for our freedoms and rule off law to let a deranged asshole and his henchmen destory them all in a few years. But continue snapping to and singing his praises, until you are on the other sude of his derained equations.

[Bicycle Bill]

" let's just say that I''ve never heard of people volunteering to become slaves or acquiring a life-threatening illness".

Ever hear of a product called 'cigarettes?

When I was in the fourth grade, 1949, long before the surgeon general ever put his warning on a pack of cigs, we commonly called them 'coffin nails' and 'cancer sticks.' Some of my fellow 4th graders bought them. The brand called "Wings" sold for about half the price of a regular pack-- ten cents. Wings included trading cards, just like the English brand "Players'. Rather than sports celebrities, the card in a pack of wings were all about flying machines. I think the wings pack contain less than 20 cigs, and the cigs were slightly smaller than Lucky's or Camels, or Chesterfields (the major brands then.) I never volunteered, never smoked any cig, or cigar or a pipe. When I shipped to Army basic training in 1960, there were only three smokers in my platoon. When I left active duty in 1963, I and three others were the only non smokers in my platoon. One was a career NCO. That was first platoon, H&Hq Company, 11th Combat Engineer Group, Schwetzingen, Germany

Times have changed. Kids for a prank now never call a store on the phone and ask "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

All volunteer smokers and consumers of nicotine.

Precisely my point, BP.   The little round tube of tobacco didn't just jump into a person's mouth.   Those people who became smokers put the cigarette into their own mouths, struck the match themselves, lit it up, and sucked it on down.

And while I don't deny that cigarettes are addictive, it wasn't as well known a fact (or at least as well-publicized a fact) in the 1940s and 1950s as it is today.   Go back and look at cigarette ads in LIFE, Time, and other magazines of that era.   You'll see ads claiming "four out of five doctors endorse __________ cigarettes" or how "___________ cigarettes are good for your T-zone".

Same with alcohol.   Mr. Booze must be consumed by someone — one does not become an alcoholic through osmosis or by some germ floating around in the air we breathe,   And because it is originally a personal choice to consume or not consume alcohol, tobacco, grass, THC gummies, or any thing else that can lead to addiction, it is for that reason I contend that a person, even an addicted one, can eventually be weaned off their chemical of choice.   It ain't gonna be easy (and I can personally vouch for that), but it can be done.

-"BB"-

[Burning Petard]

BB, I wonder about the amazing ability of ad agencies to book business for tv ads. There once were lots of ads on tv for distilled spirits and tobacco. The feds banned this advertising and the sales of these products increased. That looks to me as objective data that tv ads are not a good way to make sales.

snailgate

[liberty]

......One said it's not slavery because drug users know what they're getting into. Well, the same could be said for the boat drivers: they know they're going to war, they know we're going to go after them, we're going to try to destroy their boats. So, in essence, it's their own fault......

I said that drug users aren't anything like slaves because they choose to take drugs.

The "boat drivers' are alleged drug runners. Declaring a war on drugs doesn't give the government the legal authority to murder people.

The mission is not to kill the people; it is to destroy the boats and the cargo. If the people put themselves in harm’s way, that’s their fault. The only way we have a chance to stop it is by destroying the boats, there are too many of them to try to arrest and process. They don’t even bother arresting these people when they do capture them; they just send them back home, and that’s the correct strategy, because they’re irrelevant. They don’t matter; what matters are the boats and the drugs.

If they were arrested and brought to trial, they would only clog up the court system. Send them home, destroy their boats, and sink their cargo. You’d think these people would have enough intelligence to bring a few plastic jugs or something that could float. If they can’t afford A life preserver, even simple jugs could serve as makeshift flotation devices. Because If the boat is still floating, we’re going to attack it again.

[Joe Guy]

The mission is not to kill the people; it is to destroy the boats and the cargo.......

The mission is to counter "narco-terrorists" with lethal strikes. If they only wanted to destroy the boats and cargo, they wouldn't use lethal force.

[Sue U]

The mission is not to kill the people; it is to destroy the boats and the cargo.......

The mission is to counter "narco-terrorists" with lethal strikes. If they only wanted to destroy the boats and cargo, they wouldn't use lethal force.

The "mission" is to create bogeymen to frighten Americans into submission to authoritarianism and acceptance of whatever the fascists running the government want to do in the name of "security."

[Bicycle Bill]

The "mission" is to create bogeymen to frighten Americans into submission to authoritarianism and acceptance of whatever the fascists running the government want to do in the name of "security."

DING — DING — DING — DING — DING — DING — DING — DING !!!
WE HAVE A WINNER !!!!

The judges would have also accepted "To misdirect the public so they would not be focusing on things which are actually of vital and crucial concern", or any other answer which indicated an attempt at confusion or obfuscation of things that truly matter.

-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

Furthermore . . .

Brian Goodman is now a professor of law at NYU who served as a legal counsel in the Pentagon in 2015 and 2016. He told the New York Times today,

"Focusing on the shipwreck is a distraction in so far as it suggests everything else preceding and after that strike was all legitimate. Even under a law of armed conflict, they were all civilians. And we are not actually in armed conflict either way. It was all murder”

MS NOW's Lawrence O'Donnell program, Dec 4

[MajGenl.Meade]

That flaming liberal George Will is back at it, lib. You should write him a letter.

"The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself"

[liberty]

That flaming liberal George Will is back at it, lib. You should write him a letter.

"The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself"

Well, Meade, what do you think of the American pilots who machine‑gunned Nazi pilots who had bailed out of their disabled aircraft?

[liberty]

The mission is not to kill the people; it is to destroy the boats and the cargo.......

The mission is to counter "narco-terrorists" with lethal strikes. If they only wanted to destroy the boats and cargo, they wouldn't use lethal force.

How else would you do it with prayers and bad vibes.

[Joe Guy]

How else would you do it with prayers and bad vibes.

The US Navy has the ability to intercept, capture and board a fishing boat without blowing it and the crew to pieces.

[datsunaholic]

How else would you do it with prayers and bad vibes.

The US Navy has the ability to intercept, capture and board a fishing boat without blowing it and the crew to pieces.

We practiced VBSS (Visit Board Search and Seizure) on my ship in the mid 1990s. And I was on an AMMUNITION/OILER. The boats we were trained to board would possibly be carrying RPGs and weapons, not bricks of Cocaine. Just a tad bit more dangerous.

But then again we were expecting to board Dhows that might make 10kts on a good day. Not 60kt speedboats.

I don't agree with blowing up the boats without searching... but I also disagree with the media (and folks here) characterizing these as "fishing boats". They are not. These are boats running contraband, but they don't do all the way to the US. They head for uncontrolled waters to meet up with the luxury yachts that actually bring the cocaine (not fentanyl) in.

What they should be doing is following the boats to their destination, via radar. Of course that would probably find a Trump supporters multi-million dollar yacht... But the US war on Drugs has always just been to take out the small guys at the end of the chain rather than the actual source, because there are always more small guys. It was never about stopping it, just making it look like they were trying while protecting the actual money (and the 1%'s own supply).