Bill Conroy

‘Invasion plan’: Two North Texas men face federal indictment over plot to murder, enslave people on Haitian island Two North Texas men face federal charges after a grand jury indicted them for an alleged plot to invade an island off Haiti, murder the men living there, and enslave women and children.

When literal batcrap crazy Nazi plots are a normal part of the Trump era, we know it's time to stop the talk of finding common ground with the "other side." The only thing reasonable people can agree to here is that, if guilty as charged, these perps go to prison and see how slavery works there.

U.S. Ran a War Game on Ousting Maduro. Venezuela Fell Into Chaos.

This is what we can expect from Trump's "drug war" He breaks it, he owns it.

NYT
The results showed that chaos and violence were likely to erupt within Venezuela, as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerrilla groups jockeyed for control of the oil-rich country.

Coast Guard is under DHS. So, this makes sense. They are simply re-aligning their policy on fascist and hate symbols to keep pace with Border Patrol, ICE, and the private bounty hunters that they plan to deputize. Makes DHS white supremacists one big happy family with a revolving door.

ICE Barbie Plots Secretly Using Bounty Hunters for Round-ups Amid a beleaguered recruitment drive, it’s unclear whether private contractors would be subject to the same physical fitness tests that new DHS recruits have been failing en masse.

The media should be on this hard. Privatizing the military via Blackwater didn't work out well in Iraq.

DB
News the department may now be going private with its nationwide migrant purge comes amid reports that more than a third of new ICE recruits are failing to pass the most basic fitness tests.

In reversal, Trump says House Republicans should vote to release Epstein files President Donald Trump said House Republicans should vote to release the files in the Jeffrey Epstein case, a startling reversal after previously fighting the proposal as a growing number of those in ...

Trump's big Epstein stall has plenty of track yet. But the race to midterms has begun.

As a military assault looms in Latin America, paramilitaries prowl our streets.

Masses of people are starving, sick as the economy sinks.

It's winter in America.

For Trump, too.

Homeland Security Missions Falter Amid Focus on Deportations

This is a ticking time bomb. Trump's racist deportation dragnet is opening a back door to incalculable harms to victims of predators. He's also playing Russian roulette with our national security.

NYT
Today, the Trump administration has remade the agency into a veritable Department of Deportation.

In this email, Epstein is offering to help the Kremlin manipulate Trump. This is damning, knowing Epstein also claims to have had dirt on Trump.

He'll use all levers of power to keep the files from surfacing.
Trump doesn't get embarrassed, but humiliation is a crushing blow to a narcissist.

I have no doubt Trump used Epstein for his perversions. I also believe Epstein's world was crawling with snitches & spies. A target-rich environment.

Remember, Trump was in the casino and real estate business and running with an assorted list of shady characters at the time he also partied with Epstein.

If foreign spies were in the Epstein mix, they collect kompromat. And the FBI case notes will include names that make the dots easy to connect.

What Trump really fears?

“There are probably intelligence ties to our CIA and other foreign intelligence, and the American people would be shocked to know that our intelligence agency was working with a pedophile who was running a sex trafficking ring." — Republican Congressman Thomas Massie (Ky.

U.S. conducts 20th strike on alleged drug boat, killing 4 people in Caribbean Sea Since September, U.S. forces have destroyed multiple vessels in international waters, killing at least 80 people.

Alcohol kills far more people and ruins far more lives in this country than cocaine.

But we aren't declaring Budweiser a terrorist organization and blowing up beer trucks.

Define working class. Define billionaires.

An us vs. them ideological frame that falls apart when folks don't embrace that frame. A vision for the future is different.

Example: Food, shelter, health care and equal opportunity as a floor — with all taxed progressively to maintain that floor.

Jack Schlossberg, Kennedy Heir, to Seek Nadler’s N.Y. Congressional Seat

Future Vision.

The future unfolds in waves. It can echo the past but never be the past. Nor can it exist without the past.

In terms of narrative, whoever controls the past can control the future.

NYTs
He has been especially critical — at times viciously so — of his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr..

www.cbp.gov/newsroom/sta...

If the cocaine/marijuana boat attacks launched in early September were really stopping drugs, how do we explain CBP cocaine seizures at the border exploding in September and cannabis seizures exploding in October, compared with months prior to the attacks. For every load caught, 2 get through?

Elections are about the future. If there were a poll question asking who controls that ground now, would those retreating fare well?

The Dems won ground in the elections. They ceded back ground on the shutdown.

There's time. But too many politicians aren't reading the map to the future.

This caving based on claims the goal was only to make Dem issues like health care salient, I call BS.

The health care issue would have been there to claim without a shutdown. Just like now, folks still lose coverage.

What this does is make Trump far more likely to order troops to shoot protesters.

Senate is poised to take the first steps to end 40-day shutdown The Senate is poised to take the first steps toward ending the 40-day government shutdown Sunday after a group of moderate Democrats agreed to proceed without a guaranteed extension of healthcare subs...

All this pain and nothing gained?
If Schumer can't stop it, he shouldn't be leader.

Truth is, though, despite the failure of the Dem's if they cave here, this whole exercise was a failure of government. So, it's not a surprise if it ends in failure.

But voter trust is a terrible thing to squander

Jennifer Canter (@jennifercanter) A must watch! 😂😂😂 The funniest, and best, Trump impersonation ever. VC GodfreyComic

This should be a hoot for most.

Blowing up drug boats only creates a bigger market opportunity for competitors to feed that beast. And so long as there are fisherman or laborers with hungry kids, there will be no shortage of crews to man the boats. (4

###

Drugs and addiction are a societal problem that exists because a lot of people want drugs, recreationally or to sate addictions. Always has been the case. (3

Working a drug boat run can put $500 on your table to feed your family and pay the rent. At great risk even absent US drone attacks.

You can argue they are breaking the law. But murdering them for the act of ensuring their kids don't starve is just all kinds of ways criminal itself. (2

Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet.

This is an interesting AP investigative piece on who a small number of the 70 killed to date are in Trump's war on boats. Yes, some boats were hauling illicit drugs, coke. But many of those onboard were fisherman or farmers or recently unemployed laborers, not battle-hardened "cartel soldiers." (1

The lesson of this tumultuous era in our history was revealed years ago by one of our great American writers. It's the lesson of all struggles for justice, dignity and peace.

"Without courage, you can't practice any of the other virtues consistently."

— Maya Angelou

First they gut FAA. Then they cut air capacity at the holiday season during a shutdown fight Trump's party forced because it's gutting health care and food assistance so billionaires can inject the nation's wealth.

And then they gaslight us by saying the shutdown is causing it.

I beg to differ.

Narco-Trafficking, Drug Boats and Regime Change Trump's gunboat terrorism off the coast of Venezuela won’t stop the drug trade, but it may reap him an oil windfall

houseofdeath.org/home/f/narco...

Trump Weighs Options, and Risks, for Attacks on Venezuela

NYT 11.4
A third option involves a..plan to send U.S. counterterrorism forces to seize control of..at least some of Venezuela’s oil fields..

My story 9.23
Oil is one of the major resources in the region that offers..great riches for those who control the land under which those reserves are found.

The fish rots from the head.

This isn't going to turn out like they plotted it over taxpayer-funded whiskey and cigars at the Great Gatsby soiree. Slaying a dragon sows dragon's teeth absent a viable day-after plan. Opposition front person maybe, but not a plan I'd bet the farm on. There's nothing civil about civil war.