Connecting The Dots

Posted: October 29, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) Picture by Petty Officer Jackson Adkins

It is another wild week in the Trump regime. On 1 November, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP — commonly called food stamps) will cease to operate for a lack of funds. There is an emergency fund of roughly six billion dollars in the Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for the program, but they insist they cannot release the money, even as the United States provides roughly 40 billion dollars in aid to Argentina. Perhaps MAGA actually stands for Make Argentina Great Again. Clearly Trump cares little for the American people. He only cares about his personal well-being by collecting money for himself and his family and being treated as royalty. To wit, if I may bring it up, he is suing the Department of Justice (DOJ) for 230 million dollars for pain and lost income relating to his indictments following his actions in attempting to overthrow the government and for stealing classified documents and storing them in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. The people making that decision are his personal defense attorneys that are now leading the DOJ. That money is taxpayer money. Let’s also not forget that during the shutdown, demolition of the White House continues for construction of a 300 million dollar ballroom. But we cannot feed 42 million Americans, and we do not care about the small grocers, farmers and others whose livelihoods depend on serving the people that use SNAP.

About that ballroom….

I am not a math major, but 300 million dollars for a ballroom works out to be 3,333.00 dollars a square foot. I have read that most hotel ballrooms max out at about 1,000.00 dollars a square foot for even the most luxurious locations. Additionally, reports indicate that a “patriot” donated 130 million dollars to the Pentagon, supposedly to help pay the military during the shutdown. That sounds great, but it works out to about 6 hours worth of pay. (Incidentally, a private individual paying the military — hmm, would that not make them mercenaries?) So what gives? What few people are talking about is that under the now destroyed East Wing of the White House was the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) — also known as a bunker. It was originally built as a bomb shelter during World War II. It has been updated over the years with ever more sophisticated equipment. Most famously in recent times, it is where Vice President Dick Cheney was rushed by the Secret Service during the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

It seems to me that when Trump says he needs to upgrade the East Wing, he is really talking about having a PEOC that meets his gilded standards, like 130 million dollars of gold. You know, a command bunker worthy of any self-respecting autocrat as all of his authoritarian buddies have — historically we know how well those bunkers for dictators work out in the long run. I opine that the 130 million dollars donated to the Pentagon is not for paying the troops but for helping to pay for a grand bunker. (The patriot, by the way, is thought to be Timothy Mellon, a billionaire member of the Mellon banking family and the bank is under investigation for its connections to Jeffrey Epstein. It gets “curiouser and curiouser.”)

Meanwhile, in the Caribbean Sea, and now in the Pacific Ocean, the Trump regime continues to order the murder of alleged drug smugglers. They have yet to offer even a shred of evidence to certify their assertions and not even members of Congress can get a straight answer even as they have oversight of the military and its use. Assuming for a minute that they are in fact drug smugglers — and as I have explained in previous posts I do not think most are drug smugglers — it is still unlawful under U.S. and international law to simply blow up boats and murder people just because the president says so. It is the equivalent of standing on a street corner in Huntsville Alabama and someone points at you and claims you are drug dealer and the police shoot you on sight. Or is that the point?

Admiral Alvin Holsey, USN the head of U.S. Southern Command that is responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean resigned earlier this month only one year into a normal three year tour of duty. Reports indicate that he retired early because of his concern over the use of force against unidentified boats and would not go along with the policy. At last! Someone spoke up. I wish more senior military officers would push back. Maybe they are and we just do not hear about it, but they need to re-invigorate the over two hundred year tradition that the military is non-political and takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the whims of one man. Trump continues to call it “my military” and make political speeches with uniformed military as a back drop, just like it is some kind of campaign rally. Someone needs to make it clear that the military is not his to play with.

Now, we are told that in addition to the numerous Navy and Marine units already in the Caribbean Sea, it is necessary to send the entire Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Caribbean to stop the flow of drugs into the U.S. The fact is that most drug deaths in the U.S. are from fentanyl which comes primarily from Mexico via land and smuggled mostly by U.S. citizens, and that it is made from precursors from China. Colombia and Venezuela are more into the cocaine business to Europe. Let’s do a little more math. Trump says that each boat they destroy saves 25,000 American lives that would otherwise die of an overdose. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) says that there were 73,000 drug overdoses in the year ending in April, 2025. The Secretary of Defense claims to have sunk fourteen boats at the loss of at least 57 lives. That means, according to Trump, that 350,000 American lives have been saved. There should be no more deaths for at least four and a half more years. All of it is preposterous of course.

Speaking of preposterous, a carrier and its escorts will not have any impact on the flow of drugs. Even if that were their mission, it is perhaps the least cost effective method ever devised by any human being to stop illicit drugs. (We all know that the only effective way to stop the flow of drugs is to stop the demand for them. To stop the demand, we need to improve the social safety net and our health services, especially mental health. Instead they plan to cut them.)

So why are they doing this? One, because they can. Trump gets off on being able to show his power. Two, I think something larger and far more dangerous is afoot. My thinking on this is not clear, but I am trying to connect the dots as are other Americans that spend time thinking about this.

First, remember the implementation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua, the alleged gang allegedly connected to the president of Venezuela. They, the Venezuelan president, and the alleged drug boat personnel have all been declared terrorists. The president will use this fig leaf to attack Venezuela (and perhaps Colombia as he has been whining about their president too) and assert that he is wiping out narco-terrorists. Think about the fact as well that Trump has already put American troops onto the streets of American cities in places he does not like. He wants to put more there and elsewhere including actual, regular combat troops. Remember that he talks about “the enemy within” and how they are as dangerous as any foreign terrorists. He calls those that he considers his enemies (anyone that doesn’t agree with him) “domestic terrorists” and that the Democrats are an “extremist organization” among other demeaning and demonizing terms. I have already written about the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) that outlines the steps that Trump wants to take against “Antifa” and “domestic terrorist organizations” by using broad and vague language that prohibits dissent and severely impacts our First Amendment right to protest. It asserts that anyone that espouses “extremism on migration, race and gender,” in other words anyone that disagrees with him, or does not match his view of “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” is to be investigated and perhaps prosecuted.

As I look at those dots, I become increasingly concerned. I hope not paranoid, but to me the warning lights are blinking bright red and sirens are blaring. He is setting a precedent in Latin America that he can and will use the military to eliminate anyone he deems a terrorist. Why not in the U.S. as well?

Remember that the powers behind Trump’s throne are Stephen Miller and Russel Vought, the same two men that are the primary architects of Project 2025. They are well on their way to attaining their goals. Miller and Vought continue to assert that Trump has plenary authority to do whatever he wants. Absolute power. If you oppose their plans, as did Governor J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) recently, he will accuse you of “seditious conspiracy.”

Put over all of it that MAGA legislators all over the country are trying to gerrymander their House of Representatives districts to eliminate districts that voted for Democrats and thus keep control of the House. Texas succeeded in doing so and there are many more working on doing the same. That is the first sign that the 2026 elections, if held, are going to be anything but free and fair. Indeed, Speaker “Little Mikey” Johnson has declared that no Republican Representatives should return to Washington for the fourth straight week. They are getting paid during the shutdown to sit home and do nothing. Talk about freeloaders living off the public dole. Perhaps they will never return. As it is, Trump was quoted as saying “I’m the president and the Speaker,” according to two anonymous sources from within the White House.

We find ourselves in this predicament for a variety of reasons. Let us not let it happen because it is impossible to imagine that it can happen here. It is happening here. The entire picture to me looks like Trump wants to sit in his new bunker, direct the military to kill anyone he deems disloyal and ensconce himself and his cronies in power for as long as they can illegally keep it.

Political Decisions Have Real Impacts

Posted: August 10, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Whether or not one believes that the sequestration is good for the country, I suspect that many people don’t get much past the political arguments to see that it has real impacts.

One area that is feeling the full force of the Budget Control Act of 2011 that brought us the current budget sequestration, or across the board spending cuts, is the United States Armed Forces.  This was brought home once again this week with the announcement that the USS Miami (SSN-775), a nuclear attack submarine, will be scrapped rather than repaired following an arson fire while in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery Maine.  The reason given for this decision is, basically, the fact that there just is not enough money in the Navy’s budget to make the repairs.  More accurately, if they spent the money to fix it, there would be insufficient funds available to do needed repairs to a significant number of other ships, many of which have already had their planned maintenance deferred past the normal limits because of the shortage of funds.

Additional damage to the military’s ability to adequately meet its mission requirements is exacerbated by a less understood budget trick used by Congress in many instances over the past few years.  Since the Congress cannot agree on Authorization and Appropriations Bills (a budget) in a timely manner, or perhaps not at all in some cases, they pass continuing resolutions that keep spending levels at, or below, those of previous years.  Additionally, the bills normally include very specific limitations and specified uses for the money that is appropriated.  In other words, critics that say the military should know how to manage its finances better do not seem to take into account that Congress severely limits the leadership in the Pentagon (and other federal agencies for that matter) in their ability to move money from one area to another as needed.  They cannot manage their money because in many cases, they are not allowed to do so.

Only when the pain to the individual representatives in our national legislature becomes too much, as happened in April 2013 when reduced manning in air traffic control towers was cut back, will Congress act.  In this case they passed the Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013 that allowed the Federal Aviation Administration to move funds within the department to eliminate traffic controller furloughs, thus saving themselves from flight delays when trying to leave Washington’s National Airport.  Recently, in some individual cases within the Department of Defense, Congress allowed exceptions to the “no exceptions” legislation, such as allowing the US Air Force to move some funds to begin training aircraft squadrons that would otherwise have been grounded indefinitely.

Outside of the issues that get the most headlines (civilian employee furloughs, cancelled fly-overs at football games) there is an insidious side to the combined impact of sequestration and continuing resolutions.  In addition to the leadership having no idea what their budget numbers may be, and therefore they are unable to enact any kind of meaningful long-range plan, there is also a direct bearing on the men and women in the ranks with a resultant negative impact on morale and motivation.

Traditions “to do more with less” not-with-standing, there is only so much that can be done without the proper support to get it done.  Under the current conditions the military’s leaders are focused on training and equipping those units on the front lines.  But since there are insufficient funds to adequately support the military our nation says it wants, the result is those that have returned from their deployments do not get the same level of training and support.  Put another way, if I work on a ship’s radar — and am a certified expert that takes pride and satisfaction in my work — what is the organization telling me when it says I need to wait six months to get the repair part needed to get my equipment in top operating condition?  Is it saying I’m not important?  My equipment is not important?  My unit is not important?  What happens when there is a contingency and we are told to set sail and I know that my equipment — the piece of the ship that is my responsibility — is not in top operating condition?

On top of that, training exercises are being cut back or eliminated.  What our military men and women can do better than any military in the world comes from practice, practice, and more practice.  When key training is cut, it takes twice as long to regain that skill.  Tanks, airplanes, ships, and other high-tech gear does not operate itself.  People operate the gear, and without the right training the most technologically equipped military cannot use it to its full ability — not to mention that under even benign circumstances, the military is a dangerous profession.  Without consistent use and improvement of aviation, ship-driving and other skills, basic evolutions become ever more dangerous and people are killed or injured needlessly.

With two wars putting incredible stress on our citizens in uniform and their families, why do we want to create a false sense of crisis that only puts more stress and additional unknown problems on top of those that already exist in an inherently dangerous profession?

The budget “crisis” is a false crisis that some in Congress created and use for their own personal political ends.  Patriots?  I think not.  If the mess doesn’t get straightened out soon — and the odds for that are low given that our legislators went home for five weeks without a budget in sight — the impact will create other USS Miami situations and do what our enemies could not — knock powerful units of our Armed Forces out of the battle.