25Aug2025
Another weekly rally at Senator McCormick’s office. He has yet to have a town hall meeting with constituents.
We’ve written a letter to him to urge him to hold one and have suggested a number of issues that the town hall could be about. Eventually, we’ll put it online so that others can endorse it.
On September 2nd, the US used lethal military force against a Venezuelan motorboat that was in international waters. The United States is not at war with Venezuela. All 11 people on board were killed. As far as Fox News is concerned, this is a non-story, no biggie and of no real concern. Had this occurred to a Russian or Ukrainian boat headed to the other shore of the Dnieper River, this attitude would be justified. The two countries are at war with each other, with them firing missiles and launching drones into each other’s territories and ground forces having about 5k active combat engagements per month. The sinking of a motorboat between Ukraine and Russia would be worth a few social media posts at most.
But this, as The Guardian (British paper), stated, “may have violated international human rights and maritime law” and
Under Article 2(4) of the UN charter, countries can resort to force when under attack and deploying their military in self-defence.
President Trump has claimed that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is effectively at war with the US,
But Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin told BBC Verify that the US actions “stretches the meaning of the term beyond its breaking point”.
Trump said in a social media post that the boat “was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.” Very interestingly though, in a letter submitted to Congress in accordance with the War Powers Act, Trump claimed the boat “was assessed to be affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.” Did the President have intelligence information that positively identified Tren de Arugua as being the owner of the boat or did they reach a much vaguer, less certain conclusion?
Vice President JD Vance has taken a very assertive stance against being fussy and legalistic about shooting at an unarmed watercraft in international waters. As the blogger put it “we can protect Americans from drug smugglers without extrajudicial slayings.” In response to the assertion that the US had committee a war crime:
It was at that point when Vance replied, “I don’t give a s— what you call it.”
President Trump doesn’t argue that he isn’t acting like a dictator, only that
many Americans are so desperate to lower crime rates, that they’ll accept a president acting like a “dictator” to get the job done
This is very deeply concerning. If Fox News doesn’t care about the president killing a group of overseas foreigners, how will they react if the president kills a group of American citizens? How about if he kills white, Christian, heterosexual citizens from a Red state? Where will they draw the line?
With the president’s son-in-law Jaresd Kushner (married to Ivanka Trump) taking a real estate developer’s approach towards Gaza, with some attention paid to Israeli concerns and none at all about the concerns of Palestinians, how are the residents of the West Bank faring? Ehh, not a whole lot better. According to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, when he spoke to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Israel plans to annex over 80% of the West Bank, leaving six disconnected cities in Palestinian hands. Despite any claim that the plan is in response to anything that Europeans have been asserting, the annexation plan has been in the works for several years.
By blocking the granting of visas for attending the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session in New York where the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had planned to address the assembly about “the long-dead and mythical ‘two-state solution,’” the Trump Administration has made it clear that it has no interest in any solution that Palestinians might favor.
Heh! Trump Administration people are getting along really well with each other! The Treasury Secretary and the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency had a discussion that included the line
“Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face.”
So nice to see them getting along so well!
CBS News has learned to its dismay that surrendering once to the Trump Administration just won’t do. They have now been forced to not edit lies out of an interview with a Trump Cabinet official. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem lied several times in an interview about the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. When she saw that her lies had been edited out, she insisted that full comments be aired unedited. CBS complied.
One of the real problems Trump has been facing has been the Jeffrey Epstein case. He and other members of his administration made a big deal about how they were going to bust a lot of people, then decided to say “Nevermind” and to then try to discourage anyone from pursuing the case any further. Speaker Johnson tried to be helpful and claimed that Trump was actually working as an FBI informant in the case.
Well, now it’s Monday, and Trump’s little Johnson is walking that back via a statement.
Of course, with Trump claiming the whole case is now a hoax, that produced a bit of a problem of credibility.
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