Random thoughts #76

Random thoughts #76

Venezuela

Are we at war with Venezuela? We just blew up another boat killing 6 people. That brings the total to 27 fatalities thus far. The president has claimed that the boats were running drugs and the people were members of Tren de Aragua. I am not aware of any evidence that substantiates this claim but hey, who needs evidence. Right? Regardless the Venezuelans can do little about it. The Navy has beefed up its presence in the area and only a fool would venture out in a speedboat to test the accuracy of naval weapons. At a press conference the president said that the strikes saved more than 100,000 lives. “Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives so every time you see a boat and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough;’ It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people.” Well there he goes again. About 75,000 people died from drug overdoses in the US. So Trump’s airstrikes have saved twice the number of people that would have died had he done nothing. Well we know that the president has trouble with math.

I am not going to venture into the legality of it all but the strikes are illegal under maritime law. Picky. Picky. Trump doesn’t like Maduro so the law is irrelevant (to him). Moreover he has just authorized CIA interventions in Venezuela itself. He has also hinted in conducting land operations as well. What type of covert operations are we talking about here?

Also returning the 600,000 or so Venezuelans in this country back to their homeland is intentionally destabilizing. But what can Maduro do? He is moving some troops to the coast and says that  the “U.S. is a rapacious Nazi-like state that wants to dig its claws into the country’s oil wealth but that the Venezuelan military, the National Bolivarian Armed Forces, are positioning to repel any invasion.” Sure. More fundamentally, I would hate to be a Venezuelan fisherman. Thus far we have at least eight warships and one submarine in the eastern Caribbean. We also have an assault read group with 2,500 marines as a rapid response force. So what happens next? Again is there legal authority to do any of this. Regardless, the congress won’t try to stop him – at least the republicans won’t even try.

Racial gerrymandering

I have written before about the Louisiana racial gerrymandering case currently being heard before the Supreme Court. Seems that the constitution allows gerrymandering so long as it isn’t racial – as defined in the Voters Rights Act. So we have weird looking congressional districts to reduce the number of representatives in a particular party and weird ones to assure a district that is majority minority. As I have said before, I wonder why white voters have not filed suit in California where they are grossly underrepresented. The Supreme Court is likely to rule racial gerrymandering unconstitutional. Some have bemoaned that this will strip blacks of representation and give the republicans at least 19 more seats in the House. Yet a majority of black congressmen represent districts that are not majority minority. So the concern is a bit overblown.

One way to get rid of gerrymandering is to go to a system of proportional representation. Other countries do this in various ways. But let’s keep the total number in the congress fixed a 435. Leave the same number in the states but instead of dividing each state into districts with winner take all, make the districts larger, say only three in Tennessee and allocate the seats by votes. So if the republicans get 60 percent of the votes in east Tennessee, the democrats would still get 40 percent of the seats. And this would be done by party and not by race because that assumes that the vast majority of any race only votes for one party. The same could be said of religion or any other distinguishing demographic factor.

DEI research

The administration is shutting down funding for research projects that study gender, race and other demographic factors. Diversity grants have been terminated where scientists engaged in biomedical research found their grants canceled. So a grant to study psychiatric disorders that are more prevalent among minorities loses funding. Grants for underprivileged first generation students from rural areas have been terminated, even if the recipients are white. An HHS spokesman said that the grants “no longer align” with agency priorities or the president’s executive orders “eliminating wasteful, ideologically driven DEI initiatives.” Recall that the president instructed the entire federal government to end programs that promoted diversity, referring to them as “shameful,” “immoral,” and an “immense public waste.” One researcher noted that she was researching specific genes that make some people more susceptible to diabetes, and who don’t respond well to existing treatments. She said “In my research, I use genetics to help find better drug targets so we can find medicines for people who don’t already have therapies that work.”

I am well aware that many of us think that a good deal of research funding is wasted. For example HHS canceled $350 million in projects for such things as studying “multilevel and multidimensional structural racism, “gender-affirming hormone therapy in mice” and “microaggressions.” One project was “Assessing intersectional multilevel and multidimensional structural racism for English- and Spanish-speaking populations in the US.” The project included work to create an “intersectional, multilevel, and multidimensional Structural Racism Measure” in order to “eliminate health disparities and discrimination” for racial minorities. Some might think this is useless but recall my posting on kidney failure. It was found that the metric used to determine transplants consistently put blacks into a lower less critical category than warranted resulting in more adverse outcomes. The resulting research changed that metric to account for racial differences which has saved lives. That research would have not been funded by this administration.

But I am not smart enough to know whether much of diversity research is beneficial or a waste of time and money. Many life-saving therapies have come from projects that sounded totally inane. I am also left to wonder if my pioneering research in lending discrimination would have been funded. Studying the accept/reject decision on mortgages and their pricing might have been considered frivolous as many could find superficial justifications for denying mortgages to minorities. My work resulted in many changes in how we test for discrimination and resulting laws and regulations. Only goes to show you that you don’t have to be on the left to investigate whether there are differences in behavior by certain groups or by sex. Yet the NIH has even canceled projects studying autism because they involved diverse populations, with differences in race and gender. Pardon me, but this is naïve overkill and may be life altering. Just like there are gender differences, there are racial ones too. The administration needs to be smarter and not reject and defund projects simply because of the name. The bottom line is  “Is it racist to address racism”?

16 thoughts on “Random thoughts #76”

  1. Maduro is a communist. Declaring war on his drug traffickers by taking out boats is not a problem for me. These people are the worst of the worst. They have sown the wind and they are reaping the whirlwind. There is a simple solution for Maduro. Crack down on the drug market in his country. Perhaps drug traffickers will find a more viable economic market. If not, the world will not miss their activities.

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    2. There is so much being said about MADURO on other sites. I brought up The Shah , Noriega, too..
      America has made many mistakes in its allegiance and enemies..

      But one thing is clear : Trump says illegals are all rapists, murderers, drug dealers- and he’s sending bombers to Venezuela. Not a ringing endorsement for anyone. And if MADURO goes- what will his Russian friends do?..

      America has a forthright policy: we break it , we buy it.

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  2. Repeating what I’ve said before: no one would bring drugs into this country , if no one else was buying them- spoiled Americans, getting institutional funding for their pathetic addictions..

    Same for drugs and illegals- if you want to stop both, STOP marketing to them..

    Are there any WOMEN subscribing to this blog?
    Can’t give you a source but this came up during a Family- based , pro birth convention…

    ….”( Haywood) blames birth rate declines on feminism and democratic changes overturning what he sees as natural hierarchies of gender and race.
    “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its progeny are probably the single most destructive set of laws in American history, and all should be wiped forever from the history of this nation,” Haywood said in 2023, drawing applause from the Natal Con crowd…”

    Gerrymandering is a simplistic approach to what white/ Christian/ male nationalists have in mind.

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    1. This is very confusing. Are you referring to Haywood Burns the civil rights lawyer? Those couldn’t be his words. I can assure you that despite its shaky constitutional interpretation that the Civil Rights Act along with the Voter Rights Act were the most significant civil rights laws in my lifetime. Now whether they are still needed is open to debate.

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      1. Found the article.
        There was only one paragraph extra about Hayward… it’s NPR.

        …” first Natal Con, in 2023, included a presentation by far-right businessman Charles Haywood on the importance of men-only spaces. Haywood, who founded a shampoo company and aspires to be a self-described “warlord,” told the audience that workplaces should revert to privileging men with families and being segregated by sex. “And generally, women should not have careers. They should be socially stigmatized if they have careers,” Haywood said at Natal Con that year. He sponsored this year’s conference but didn’t speak….”

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  3. My sister in law and her family were forced to leave Venezuela. Chavez told her father he could stay and die, or leave and live.

    The Maduro/Chavez regimes are terrorist regimes. Thank God for Trump having the courage to do something for the Venezuelans, trapped into horrid conditions by Narco terrorists. Hopefully the regime is ended soon and Maduro is locked up in Leavenworth.

    We have a serious deficit spending issue in this Country. Cuts have to be made. Those studies that aren’t worthless can find private funding. Until we get our financial house in order.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/16/us-budget-deficit-lower-in-2025-tariffs-debt-payments-both-at-records.html

    Judge Jackson argued that Blacks are disabled, and that is why they need districts gerrymandered for them……Do you agree?

    https://nypost.com/2025/10/16/us-news/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-argues-for-race-based-redistricting-citing-the-americans-with-disabilities-act-theyre-disabled/

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    1. Of course I don’t agree. But you should read the whole context of her statement. It has been used previously in arguments prior to her’s. It relates to the basis of the argument for ADA. I consider this a nothing burger or else the other justices would have spoken up.

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    2. Leavenworth got my attention. WTF would a foreigner be at Leavenworth ?We re trying to get rid of sombrero…

      That implied a one- world government with the Anti-Christ in charge..

      More practical: if Donald Trump runs the world, it will be a return to nation- building, and the British have already shown colonies are hard to control..

      US won’t be in charge of S.A.narco terrorism. US will be in charge of Australian fires and Japanese tsunamis.

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      2. Glad you mention Noriega. Yes , I remember him..

        Since I nor most Americans are fm Venezuela, it’s hard to say what all the issues are. But if people are fleeing a country, that is considered an American enemy, we would be nicer to refugees. Government settlement, not roundups.
        If you tell me illegals are Venezuelan drug dealers – does it bother you if others see you that way?..

        BEST policy is to go after drug users here in Knoxville. America First..

        Noriega: don’t like his extradition compared to Vietnam, a terrible legacy.
        And who made him a U.S. ally?…. messed up American policy is shameful ..

        “…..Amassing a personal fortune through drug trafficking operations by the Panamanian military, Noriega had longstanding ties with American intelligence agencies before the U.S. invasion of Panama removed him from power…”

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  4. Larry, I have pretty first hand knowledge on this subject. You just seem to be making uninformed comments.

    Venezuela has emptied their prisons and sent them to the USA. For what purpose?

    The only people in prison in Venezuela now are political prisoners.

    The best way to end the mass illegal migration is to stabilize Venezuela.

    Don’t let your hatred for Trump cause you to overlook a very positive outcome for Venezuela and their long suffering people.

    Noriega turned bad. Maduro has always been bad.

    Just like the recent peace deal in Israel. The good Venezuelans need our help. Which will help the USA be a safer place too. This is absolutely nothing like Vietnam and not a good comparison.

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    1. Vietnam was a comparison made by other commentators on history..and I’ve said on other sites that Americans have no full understanding of Venezuela..
      The only way to bring the two topics together is by saying America wanted to make the lives in both countries better, except we have the example of Vietnam, in showing American ideals don’t always equal American resolve..

      As I recall, you are probably American born, but your personal hopes can only be met if you ‘return’ to Venezuela- there’s nothing I want there.

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