US Navy murders Venezuelan citizens on the open seas

https://x.com/jeremykauffman/status/1964777469648781409
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Didn't the extrajudicial killing ship (no pun intended) already sail with Obama killing Anwar Al Awlawki?


Everytime I think "Man! Donald Trump has really gone over the edge!" I get reminded of how far over the edge we went over a decade ago.
 
Apropos of nothing that this thread is really about, but that figure is utter horseshit.

I've been hearing that number thrown out for years now, even as the number of smokers has drastically decreased.

The same way they monkeyed around with drunk driving deaths and COVID 19 deaths is how they arrived at that number, usually how it works is anybody that has ever reported on any health form that they smoked at any time in their lives, when they die, even if they die in a car crash or house fire, their death is chalked up as a "smoking related fatality".
There are about 300K deaths from lung cancer and COPD in the U.S. per year. While they are not all smoking related (I have a cousin who never smoked but got long cancer from chemical exposure in the U.S. Navy), I'm willing to bet most were smoking releated. At that to the number of heart attacks of smokers and I think that's where there 400K number comes from.
 
Didn't the extrajudicial killing ship (no pun intended) already sail with Obama killing Anwar Al Awlawki?


Everytime I think "Man! Donald Trump has really gone over the edge!" I get reminded of how far over the edge we went over a decade ago.

I think it actually began under Bush.

iirc, they had killed a US citizen prior to Awalaki.

But thanks to the dead internet, this is all I could find:


"The duty to approve or reject putting an individual on the kill list was granted to this small group at the CIA by President Bush, and the responsibility was extended by President Obama."
 
I think it actually began under Bush.

iirc, they had killed a US citizen prior to Awalaki.

But thanks to the dead internet, this is all I could find:


"The duty to approve or reject putting an individual on the kill list was granted to this small group at the CIA by President Bush, and the responsibility was extended by President Obama."
It was definitely Obama.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit against Obama administration officials for the 2011 drone-strike killings of three U.S. citizens in Yemen, including an al-Qaida cleric.
 
THREAD:

 
Apropos of nothing that this thread is really about, but that figure is utter horseshit.

I've been hearing that number thrown out for years now, even as the number of smokers has drastically decreased.

The same way they monkeyed around with drunk driving deaths and COVID 19 deaths is how they arrived at that number, usually how it works is anybody that has ever reported on any health form that they smoked at any time in their lives, when they die, even if they die in a car crash or house fire, their death is chalked up as a "smoking related fatality".

Even if the 440,000 number is wrong (and as a skeptic of statistics - especially of those presented in a politically motivated context - I wouldn't be at all surprised if it is), the logical force of the criticism of Vance's jingoism still remains. Reflexive "rah! rah!" boosterism rarely concerns itself with niceties such as accuracy, precision, or consistency. Those things just get in the way of disposable ad hoc emotional appeals. If one should be surprised by anything, it's that they haven't (yet) invoked the "it's for the children!!" angle.
 
THREAD:

Meanwhile...

Anarcho Tyranny



Yeah, it's real.

 
Even if the 440,000 number is wrong (and as a skeptic of statistics - especially of those presented in a politically motivated context - I wouldn't be at all surprised if it is), the logical force of the criticism of Vance's jingoism still remains. Reflexive "rah! rah!" boosterism rarely concerns itself with niceties such as accuracy, precision, or consistency. Those things just get in the way of disposable ad hoc emotional appeals. If one should be surprised by anything, it's that they haven't (yet) invoked the "it's for the children!!" angle.
 
I'm inclined to do a lot more than just quibble over Brakey's claim about the supposed purpose of the Constitution (see my replies to this thread, for example), but setting that aside, he is correct:

https://x.com/EricBrakey/status/1965032582292075005

The Declaration of Independence asserts that all human beings have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.

The U.S. Constitution establishes a government whose purpose is to protect the rights of its citizens and residents.

Take the two together: foreigners have natural rights, but it is not our government’s job to protect those rights.

While our government does not have a positive obligation to defend the rights of foreigners, it does not have the authority to violate the rights of foreigners either.

Extra-judicial killings by an executive without legislative authorization is repugnant to the Constitution.

 
I'm guessing the vessel would have been fully equipped to make the trip in Trinidad which is where it was heading.

Very roughly it's 1600 miles from Trinidad to South Florida.

Assuming a steady 25 knot cruise, that's 64 hours, less than three days.

Again, making an assumption, let's say those four outboards were fairly modern, less than 20 years old, four stroke, 200 HP models, Mercury, Yamaha, Suzuki - they all burn roughly the same amount, 6-7 GPH at 3000-4000 RPM, which is more than enough to maintain that 25 knot cruise on a vessel that size. 7 x 4 = 28 total GPH

That's 28 GPH at the high end. 28 x 64 = 1792 gallons.

Round it up to 1800.

That vessel could easily hold that much fuel, along with drug cargo, again, making an assumption that it wasn't a bulky product like weed or something. And again, making an assumption that they did not have pre planned refueling vessels along the way to meet them.

I saw journeys like that, on vessels like that, done numerous times, during Bill Clinton's Haitian invasion in the 90s.

Not taking a stand one way or the other on the legal or moral justifications of this strike, frankly I've got more pressing outrages to worry about.

But whoever those guys were, they most certainly could have reached the US in that vessel, in a fairly short period of time, even when making assumptions about the routing and planning.
You can see into the boat. Where is the tank holding all the gas? It can't be underneath it right?
 


This is a common misunderstanding of the constitution.

When the Constitution was being written and debated, the framers clearly wanted to break from the British political tradition of investing all war powers in the executive...

Congress' authority to declare war was revolutionary in its design- this gave the congress the most representative body of our government equal power to the executive.

- instead of granting Congress the power to “make” war, as was first proposed, founders like James Madison changed the language to “declare” war.

That change of wording in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution implied that the president, as commander in chief (Article II, Section 2), retained certain powers to “make” war, if not declare it himself.

Plus they understood that Not all forms of hostilities rose to the level of a declared war.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Great Britain and colonial America waged
numerous conflicts against other states without an official declaration of war.

Of the eight major wars fought by Great Britain prior to the ratification of the Constitution, war was declared only once before the start of hostilities.

 
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