Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“European leaders and Ukraine’s allies issued a carefully worded warning to U.S. President Donald Trump early Tuesday over his lukewarm support for Kyiv, backing his call to halt fighting but rejecting any suggestion of territorial concessions to Moscow.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-allies-us-trump-yes-freezing-line-no-changing-borders-putin-russia/
“A man pardoned by President Donald Trump for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 was arrested last week for allegedly threatening to kill House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/21/jan-6-rioter-charged-hakeem-jeffries-00616481
“Ukraine shouldn’t have to give up territory as part of a peace deal with Russia, the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump pushed Kyiv to give up land to end the war.
“If we just give away the territories, then this gives a message to everybody that you can just use force against your neighbors and get what you want,” Kallas told journalists in Luxembourg after a meeting of foreign ministers. “I think this is very dangerous. That’s why we have the international law in place, [so] that nobody does that.”
…
“What you can conquer back is one question, but the other question is also what do you recognize as the territory of another country?” said Kallas, a former prime minister of Estonia. “I come from a country that was occupied for 50 years, but [a] majority of the countries in the world didn’t recognize them to be Russian territories. And that also meant a lot.””
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-kaja-kallas-pushes-back-on-donald-trump-demand-ukraine-cede-territory-to-russia-vladimir-putin/
One reason the U.S. is behind China in rare earth metals is that China can tell companies what to do for the good of the country, while Congress and presidents have allowed companies to chase short-term profits at the expense of the country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrMWJiJ3sc
““With a single phone call, Putin appears to have changed President Trump’s mind on Ukraine once again,” a second person familiar with the negotiations told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-volodymyr-zelenskyy-us-donald-trump-tense-white-house-meeting/
Trump Caves on Ukraine Again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBrvoW2aI1g
“By hiking tariffs on nearly all imports to the United States earlier this year, President Donald Trump effectively imposed one of the largest tax hikes in American history—and did so without congressional approval.
Now, the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to spend some of the revenue from those tax increases—also without congressional approval.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/03/trumps-planned-farm-bailout-should-require-congressional-approval/?nab=1
Steve Rattner: The job market is clearly getting rough right now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs0TTfacwCY
“Somewhere off the coast of Venezuela, a speedboat with 11 people on board is blown to smithereens. Vice President J.D. Vance announces that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”
When challenged that killing citizens without due process is a war crime, the vice president responded that he “didn’t give a shit.”
…
But over 20,000 people are murdered in the U.S. each year, and yet somehow we find a way to a dispassionate dispensation of justice that includes legal representation for the accused and jury trial.
Why? Because sometimes the accused is actually not guilty.
As passions subside, a civilized people should ask: To be clear, the people bombed to smithereens were guilty, right?
…
The administration has maintained that the people blown to smithereens were members of Tren de Aragua and therefore narcoterrorists.
Certainly, then, if we know they belong to a particular gang, then someone must surely have known their names before they were blown to smithereens?
At the very least, the government should explain how the gang came to be labelled as terrorists. U.S. law defines a terrorist as someone who uses “premeditated, politically motivated violence…against non-combatants.” Since the U.S. policy is now to blow people to smithereens if they are suspected of being in a terrorist gang, then maybe someone could take the time to explain the evidence of their terrorism?
…
Few independent legal scholars argue the strikes are legal. Even John Yoo—a former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, who infamously authored the Bush administration’s legal justification for “enhanced interrogation techniques”—has criticized the Trump administration’s justification for the strikes, saying: “There has to be a line between crime and war. We can’t just consider anything that harms the country to be a matter for the military. Because that could potentially include every crime.””
https://reason.com/2025/10/08/the-constitution-does-not-allow-the-president-to-unilaterally-blow-suspected-drug-smugglers-to-smithereens/?nab=1
“The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is making it harder for American farms to find seasonal workers and putting the nation’s food supply chain at risk.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/08/trumps-labor-department-admits-that-trumps-immigration-crackdown-is-causing-a-labor-shortage/?nab=1