News Vérité

When Trump was campaigning in 2024, he keyed in on correcting four global concerns overlooked, mishandled, or created by former presidents. These concerns included Iran and its nuclear ambitions, Greenland with its strategic importance to the U.S., Venezuela with its drug empire, and the Panama Canal, which should have remained a U.S. possession, he maintained. Of those four, he’s succeeded in Venezuela by extradicting the drug kingpin, and in Greenland, where he just struck a deal. Of course, the Greenland pact doesn’t do much more than the existing agreement we had with the island territory of Denmark, but at least he can claim victory. As for Iran, on the global front most would consider our military escapade there a victory for the Mullahs and IRGC. The campaign has closed off the Strait of Hormuz, creating a worldwide oil shortage, and drained the U.S. of most of its most sophisticated weapons stockpile. It has also left the Pacific Theater without a U.S. aircraft carrier. Let’s see: weapons shortage and no offensive power in the Pacific. What more could China want when it moves againt Taiwan next year, as it has repeatedly said it would do? That leaves two victories (of a

The U.S. is now using drones to take out cartel sites and drug supplies in Latin America. Earlier this year, we abducted a leader of another country to try on drug charges. On and on we go pursuing our never-ending “War on Drugs.” The CATO Institute estimates that the direct cost to enforce drug prohibition strictly is roughly $47 billion annually. The Prison Policy Initiative points out that 1 in 5 incarcerated people in the U.S. are locked up for a drug offense. Managing mass incarceration as a byproduct of drug enforcement costs federal and state governments upward of $182 billion each year. Since its formal inception under President Richard Nixon in 1971, the total cost of the American “War on Drugs” has surpassed an estimated $1 trillion. Portugal, 25 years ago, facing some of the highest drug affliction and abuse rates in Europe, decided on a new approach: not legalization, but open access and decriminalization with back-up health and recovery facilities. Here is that nation’s story (it ain’t necessarily cheap, but it works): In 2001, Portugal adopted a groundbreaking public health approach by enacting Law 30/2000, which decriminalized the acquisition, possession, and personal consumption of all illicit drugs (defined

Billed as a Trump-a-Palooza (sp?}, the GOP Midterm Convention held in Dallas this past week — designed to rally the faithful to vote in November — might have been exciting to attend, but to watch on  TV left me shaking with fear. “The GOP is dead come November” was my reaction. In truth, I found it almost impossible to watch. Even the fact that Donald Trump once again had to attach his name to the proceedings says a lot about the man in the White House. Admittedly, I voted for him three times because I saw disaster looming in his three opponents from the Demofiend Party. Two fortunately lost, but one — Joe Biden — actually brought disaster to the nation. Trump is so desperate to go down in the history books as the greatest thing since sliced bread that everything he does has to have his name attached to it: Trump Accounts, TrumpRx, Trump Center for the Performing Arts, Trump-a-Palooza. The list goes on and on. Trump at the convention may have broken his own record not only for his longest speech ever, at one hour and forty-five minutes, but also for his most repetitive monologue, filled with what