15 hours ago, Bday Prang said:

There seems to be more outrage over the rightful killing of some scumbag drug smugglers than over the assignation of Charlie Kirk

Let's get things into perspective ,  if President Trump was not in the Whitehouse  this would quite rightly go unmentioned 

Those smugglers gave up all  of their rights when they started that journey, 

Those "alleged smugglers" gave up all their rights when they started that journey? Really? And of course, even if they were running drugs, the only place where their right would no longer exist would be in a special venue commonly known as a kangaroo court.

2 hours ago, jerrymahoney said:

Not All Suspected Boats Carry Drugs: While intelligence often points to smuggling activity, a 2024 Coast Guard report indicated that a notable percentage of searches of suspect vessels can come back empty-handed, highlighting that suspicion does not always equal a confirmed positive interdiction. 

Or maybe highlighting that the drugs were simply thrown overboard.?

You can post your AI rubbish until you are blue in the face in your latest attempt to attack President Trump and his team.  Would you be so vocal about this if it was Obama in the whitehouse ? 

May be you could use your cherished AI to help find a solution to this problem instead of criticising

1 minute ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Those "alleged smugglers" gave up all their rights when they started that journey? Really? And of course, even if they were running drugs, the only place where their right would no longer exist would be in a special venue commonly known as a kangaroo court.

Exactly.

 

The left loves to promote the rights of drug smugglers, but they do not give a cr*p about the victims. 

3 minutes ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Those "alleged smugglers" gave up all their rights when they started that journey? Really? And of course, even if they were running drugs, the only place where their right would no longer exist would be in a special venue commonly known as a kangaroo court.

So be it , that is all they deserve,  Should you or anybody else fall foul of these cartels you will be in for a shock if you expect to be treated any better than a rabid dog and summarily executed in any one of numerous unpleasant and painful ways

Lefties. !   ensuring the world becomes a cess pit  at every opportunity

 

10 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

The only laws the left seems to care about, are the laws that protect the lawless. 

 

They do not give a whit about illegal drugs, and in fact they promote them, but the moment someone tries to do something about illegal drugs, the law becomes important, and they'll used every law they can to stop them. 

 

Same with illegal immigration.

Just imagine the mess we would be living in if these leftist idiots were given free rein.  Thank god the US has the likes of President Trump and hopefully very soon the UK will finally have Nigel Farage batting for us.

The American lefties are in meltdown , evidenced in this thread by their sympathies  for the drug runners  I  can hear the UK lefties sobbing already now that they realise what is coming their way very soon 

          Of course there is always a different way of looking at things, maybe I am wrong after all,       

          I mean this could well be nothing more than a sadistic fascist / nazi   president, attacking vulnerable drug running cartel members in a  attempt to appease a majority right wing electorate at the expense of an innocent until proven guilty  South American drug cartel.    Who only smuggle drugs to put food on the table for their children,  some of whom, statistically, may even be disabled

          

1 minute ago, Bday Prang said:

Just imagine the mess we would be living in if these leftist idiots were given free rein.  Thank god the US has the likes of President Trump and hopefully very soon the UK will finally have Nigel Farage batting for us.

The American lefties are in meltdown , evidenced in this thread by their sympathies  for the drug runners  I  can hear the UK lefties sobbing already now that they realise what is coming their way very soon 

Ah, maybe you have hit on an explanation of why Trump is targeting drug runners from Venezuela instead of those from Colombia and Ecuador where most of the US supply comes from. He's doing it because of his fondness for Nigel Farage. He is spending American treasure, and, possibly in the future American lives to stop cocaine from reaching Europe. And he pardoned the drug-running Honduran ally of the cartels because he wanted to encourage cartels to send their cocaine north instead of east. In a way it's heroic. He's throwing the United States on a hand grenade endangering Europe. 

 

Now, to be fair, there are some cynics who say that given that Venezuela is a relatively minor player in shipping cocaine to America, that this is just a pretext for deposing the Maduro government. That even if the Maduro government is deposed, cocaine transshipments will continue as usual. They point to the example of Ecuador, which used to be a very peaceful country until the narcotrafficantes began to use it to export cocaine to America. And despite the fact that the Ecuadorians elected a president who has led a harsh military campaign against the cartels, he has been ineffective in stopping shipments to the USA. But somehow if Maduro is deposed, the cocaine transshipments will cease? The military and civilian police forces will forswear their very profitable alliance with the cartels?

 

These Trump hating leftie scoundrels even go so far as to predict that once Maduro is deposed, the US military forces will be dispatched elsewhere and the drug running will continue as before. The problem with such persons in not only that they don't believe in Trump, but also that they don't believe in magic.

1 minute ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Ah, maybe you have hit on an explanation of why Trump is targeting drug runners from Venezuela instead of those from Colombia and Ecuador where most of the US supply comes from. He's doing it because of his fondness for Nigel Farage. He is spending American treasure, and, possibly in the future American lives to stop cocaine from reaching Europe. And he pardoned the drug-running Honduran ally of the cartels because he wanted to encourage cartels to send their cocaine north instead of east. In a way it's heroic. He's throwing the United States on a hand grenade endangering Europe. 

 

Now, to be fair, there are some cynics who say that given that Venezuela is a relatively minor player in shipping cocaine to America, that this is just a pretext for deposing the Maduro government. That even if the Maduro government is deposed, cocaine transshipments will continue as usual. They point to the example of Ecuador, which used to be a very peaceful country until the narcotrafficantes began to use it to export cocaine to America. And despite the fact that the Ecuadorians elected a president who has led a harsh military campaign against the cartels, he has been ineffective in stopping shipments to the USA. But somehow if Maduro is deposed, the cocaine transshipments will cease? The military and civilian police forces will forswear their very profitable alliance with the cartels?

 

These Trump hating leftie scoundrels even go so far as to predict that once Maduro is deposed, the US military forces will be dispatched elsewhere and the drug running will continue as before. The problem with such persons in not only that they don't believe in Trump, but also that they don't believe in magic.

Apologies, but I really couldn't be bothered reading a single word of that rubbish

16 hours ago, Bday Prang said:

There seems to be more outrage over the rightful killing of some scumbag drug smugglers than over the assignation of Charlie Kirk

Let's get things into perspective ,  if President Trump was not in the Whitehouse  this would quite rightly go unmentioned 

Those smugglers gave up all  of their rights when they started that journey, 

 

If Trump wasn't there, this would not be occurring.

I am willing to wait for the legal experts to decide, but the USA  is sliding down a very slippery slope, and the justifications given bring to mind Oliver North and his illegal activities.

1 minute ago, Bday Prang said:

Apologies, but I really couldn't be bothered reading a single word of that rubbish

Or, you have no answer for what I wrote so you resort to  this class of denialism instead.

 

Let me boil it down for you: what's going to happen in Venezuela if Maduro gets deposed? Why will the drug running business suffer?

And there's this: does the US plan to have boots on the ground to enforce law and order in Venezuela?

7 minutes ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Or, you have no answer for what I wrote so you resort to  this class of denialism instead.

 

Let me boil it down for you: what's going to happen in Venezuela if Maduro gets deposed? Why will the drug running business suffer?

And there's this: does the US plan to have boots on the ground to enforce law and order in Venezuela?

You write the same thing over and over.

12 minutes ago, Patong2021 said:

 

If Trump wasn't there, this would not be occurring.

I am willing to wait for the legal experts to decide, but the USA  is sliding down a very slippery slope, and the justifications given bring to mind Oliver North and his illegal activities.

Yes, but for Trump, the borders would be wide open for drugs and illegal aliens. 

 

What was Oliver North convicted of? Nothing we did not see during the Obama Administration, that no one went to jail for. 

1 hour ago, mikeymike100 said:

 

Hegseth ordering SEALs to “kill everybody” on a burning cartel boat?

Total WaPo fan-fiction. No audio, no docs, just anonymous whispers from salty intel holdovers pissed about the purge. Hegseth calls it fabricated garbage, the White House backs him, and even Trump says he didn’t order any follow-up hit.

Geneva Convention violation? Laughable. These were armed Sinaloa narcoterrorists in international waters hauling fentanyl that kills 80K Americans a year.

They were active combatants until the boat was slag.

SEALs are trained to refuse illegal orders; if Hegseth really said “mop up the swimmers,” they’d have told him to pound sand.

They didn’t, because it never happened.War-crime screeching is coming from the same Obama-era lawyers who signed off on 3,000+ drone strikes, including the ones that vaporized wedding parties.

Selective outrage is selective.

Trump throwing Hegseth under the bus? Please.

Hegseth is one of his most loyal soldiers since 2016. Trump’s already publicly got his back.

This isn’t lawlessness; it’s finally fighting a war on the cartels that every previous administration punted.

Dangerous? The only thing dangerous is letting these animals keep flooding poison across the border.Until someone produces actual evidence instead of “people familiar with the matter,” this is just another media hit job. Same playbook, different day.

Clearly a case, as Julius Caesar is reported to have said when the Roman Senate turned on him: "Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it in for me!"

1 hour ago, Bday Prang said:

Or maybe highlighting that the drugs were simply thrown overboard.?

You can post your AI rubbish until you are blue in the face in your latest attempt to attack President Trump and his team.  Would you be so vocal about this if it was Obama in the whitehouse ? 

May be you could use your cherished AI to help find a solution to this problem instead of criticising

The late unlamented Donald Rumsfeld once said in regard to WMDs "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence "

You've taken it one step further: Absence of evidence is evidence of guilt.

1 hour ago, Bday Prang said:

You can post your AI rubbish until you are blue in the face in your latest attempt to attack President Trump and his team. 

REDUX this topic:

 

As noted elsewhere, it seems more likely that Mr. Hegseth would be a named defendant in a wrongful death civil case than ever be subject (at least during the current presidency) to criminal indictment.

 

NB Using Gemini spares me from listing 'credible' references and statute numbers which almost nobody is going to look at anyway.

 

Every Gemini reference has a link to a source.

2 hours ago, Bday Prang said:

May be you could use your cherished AI to help find a solution to this problem instead of criticising

Well if one wants to find a solution to drug deaths in the US it doesn't start in South America https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/fig2-2025.jpg

 

1 hour ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Or, you have no answer for what I wrote so you resort to  this class of denialism instead.

 

Let me boil it down for you: what's going to happen in Venezuela if Maduro gets deposed? Why will the drug running business suffer?

And there's this: does the US plan to have boots on the ground to enforce law and order in Venezuela?

Venezuela will slide into complete anarchy and civil war, the drug cartels will play an increasingly important part in such a civil war. Venezuela will go from being an authoritarian dictatorship to an utterly failed state, much as Libya did. American business interests, who weild the real power in the US Government will need "boots on the ground" to safeguard their interests in the oil extraction business, away from the oil producing areas Venezuela will, as a coherent country, simply fall apart.

 

it all has a sort of grim inevitability.

 

Frankly the only hope for Venezuela and it's people is if Maduro or whoever succeeds him allow the US a free hand with their oil reserves, and uses whatever cash they can wring from the US in exchange to maintain a no doubt authoritarian regime which will allow their people at least a semblance of civilised life; I think they used to call it colonialism...

1 hour ago, Bday Prang said:

Apologies, but I really couldn't be bothered reading a single word of that rubbish

From your point of view anything that is in disagreement with Trump's policies or the MAGA point of view is rubbish.

 

Talk about an open mind and an independent thinker! 

3 hours ago, Bday Prang said:

Apologies, but I really couldn't be bothered reading a single word of that rubbish

You accusing others of posting rubbish! 🤣

4 hours ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Or, you have no answer for what I wrote so you resort to  this class of denialism instead.

 

Let me boil it down for you: what's going to happen in Venezuela if Maduro gets deposed? Why will the drug running business suffer?

And there's this: does the US plan to have boots on the ground to enforce law and order in Venezuela?

Apologies, but I really couldn't be bothered reading a single word of that rubbish, are you getting the message yet

Just now, Bday Prang said:

Apologies, but I really couldn't be bothered reading a single word of that rubbish, are you getting the message yet

I do get the message. Namely, you've got nothing.

2 minutes ago, Alan Zweibel said:

I do get the message. Namely, you've got nothing.

just like you I have my opinion, to which I am perfectly entiteld

 

 

The worst outcome will be he is removed from office via impeachment, or he is restricted from travelling abroad if convicted by an international tribunal.

 

So in effect....nothing of great import will happen to him.

2 hours ago, jerrymahoney said:

Well if one wants to find a solution to drug deaths in the US it doesn't start in South America https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/fig2-2025.jpg

 

I think they are already on the right track with blowing the smugglers out of the water

8 minutes ago, Bday Prang said:

I think they are already on the right track with blowing the smugglers out of the water

just like you I have my opinion, to which I am perfectly entitled.

1 minute ago, jerrymahoney said:

just like you I have my opinion, to which I am perfectly entitled.

your opinions or the opinions of AI?  either way you are indeed entitled to them

5 minutes ago, Bday Prang said:

your opinions or the opinions of AI?  either way you are indeed entitled to them

As others on here will tell you, I would have no trouble coming up directly with source links or statute type things.

 

But the key to getting a summary those things on AI -- in my case Gemini -- is in being able to ask the right question.

19 hours ago, bubblegum said:

Making this a left or right issue is already wrong. Law is law or like @Yagoda likes to "nobody is above the law" unless you're Maga of cause.

Which laws have been confirmed to have been broken and by whom?   

 

"...nobody is above the law" unless you're Maga of cause".

And the Biden family and its cohorts, of course.

 

1 hour ago, Bday Prang said:

I think they are already on the right track with blowing the smugglers out of the water

Yet Trump will pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández — the man convicted of running a narco-state.

He was sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. federal court for helping move more than 400 tonnes of cocaine into the United States.

Trump is MAGA’s Schrödinger’s cat — both tough on smugglers and freeing the man who protected the cocaine pipeline, depending on which version lets Dear Leader grift the most.

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/honduras-president-hernandez-trump-pardon-ab14a984

30 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Which laws have been confirmed to have been broken and by whom?   

 

"...nobody is above the law" unless you're Maga of cause".

And the Biden family and its cohorts, of course.

Do you own digging.