There's a video going around of what are possibly Chinook helicopters flying low over a city. Their rotors make a muffled thumping sound that's distinctively different than the sound of regular helicopter rotors. I suddenly realized that I'd never heard that sound before. A sound like that means you're in big trouble.
That is almost certainly blade slap, which any helicopter will do if while close to cruise speed it is descending slowly, into its own rotor-tip vortices. This is not particularly hazardous and on the flight deck itself you just hear it, not feel it, but at least in civilian contexts it is discouraged. Mainly for noise-abatement reasons. My guess is that military instructors frown on it too, but it can be difficult to avoid and there may be situations where you very unofficially want your enemy to hear that thumping. It is not a good-news sound.
I know rather less about Venezuela but not absolutely nothing about Venezuela. Let’s see...some years ago, but not too many years ago because the plaque called it the Bolivarian Republic thereof, I saw on Madeira some indication that the Venezuelan ambassador had been there. Not sure why, although there has been a long history of people emigrating from Portugal to Venezuela. And what else? Oh, I once read a very entertaining book titled Blood and Oil: Memoirs of a Persian Prince, by a guy who’d fled the Iranian revolution (the last one? The previous one?) and relocated to Venezuela, with which he had already had dealings when it and Iran were helping form OPEC. And I have a recollection, from my one visit to Venezuela in 1993, of bars actually displaying liquor licenses. I’d never seen anything of the sort anywhere else in Latin America. Not once in Latin America have I been drinking and got to wondering about the legality of it.
Oh, one more thing: I was in Colombia when Chávez died and it got a lot of TV coverage. A cabbie told me this was the event of the decade, no wait the century, which seemed on either timescale an exaggeration but if you live right next to Venezuela, this is apt to give you a certain perspective. Now that I try to recall this, the cabbie’s words exactly, I am unsure if he actually said “event” or “man,” and whichever it was, whether he was referring to the man’s death or the man’s works. Also, now that I think of it, what was really getting coverage was not so much the passing of the Venezuelan leader, whose medical treatment had been semi-secret, as the shopping of Venezuelans themselves, who were obviously worried about civil unrest. Latin America: it isn’t always something but it’s often something. It’s gratifyingly varied. You can do a lot of lumping there and a lot of splitting too.
I was in Cuba on a two week long mission trip in 2013 when Chavez died. The only time I saw automatic weapons (Uzi-like appearance) was at the “voluntary” “parade of grief and solidarity with the Venezuelan people” in Pinar del Rio.
Cuba is dependent upon Venezuela for its oil. Cuba has next-to-no foreign exchange resources and so pays for the oil by sending doctors to Venezuela (and now cartel dominated areas of Mexico) for two year long details, from which some don’t live long enough to return.
As far as I can tell, we have more reason to go to war with Mexico for all the Chinese Fentanyl coming from there. I feel a bit lost on this whole Venezuela thing as well.
The population of Mexico is about 130 million while Venezuela is about 30 million. And you can walk from Mexico to America. So "Invade the World, Invite the World" is a bigger threat with Mexico than with Venezuela. But I dunno...
Major pressure on Iran, also. The mullahs are diluting the super heavy sour Venezuelan crude with their better quality stuff to make it refinable. This will eliminate their ability to get hard currency by selling either the blended crude or product refined from it.
Trump is working with victory-untested and potentially disloyal troops. In such a case, starting with a small challenger is better. Look at Trump's peer situation - Putin prosecuted several wars in Chechnya and Georgia successfully before he took on Ukraine.
Disloyal leadership and middle management, yes. And I agree that could be a problem in a larger conflict. Any leadership that steps out of line will likely be met with the full punishment. Hegseth is not fucking around; and honestly, I get the feeling that he really enjoys war. Maybe even in a bit of a sadistic way…
Because it’s easier to conquer Venezuela than Mexico and with less blowback of all kinds. Disastrous decision for Trump. He’s turning into everything he said he wouldn’t be.
I don’t like Maduro but am tired of aggressive foreign policy that doesn’t directly and immediately impact Americans. America first means focus is on citizens in the U.S. not bad guys abroad.
No, he’s not. He’s against pointless “forever wars” and against trying to change distant and incompatible cultures like Iraq and Afghanistan. Venezuela is in our hemisphere, not Muslim, and was a thriving democracy before the commies took over.
If by functioning you mean not sending hundreds of thousand of illegals and asylum- seekers to the U.S., then ok. Venezuelans also voted for socialism and when it didn’t pan out, just fled for the U.S.
I’m tired of my country being the dumping ground for the world’s failures.
They failed to do that already - US has actually stepped back from conflict with Russia and China - bullying a local country is what they are doing instead.
Stepping back from conflict in Russia is a very wise decision - it unbinds Trump's hands to go after interests in Venezuela, Panama and Greenland (or West-Central Canada). China is something else entirely.
Anyway, Trump 1 : Maduro 0 now. Let's see how it goes from here...
Venezuela is what happens when the old bully finds a bigger kid in the playground. He goes to his corner and smashes everyone near him. He can no long rely on reputation for being able to beat anyone. He must now rely on being the nasitest, most vicious, most unpredictable kid in school.
That is the point of the attacks on Venezuela. The obvious criminality is a feature, not a bug.
Just watch what happens next in New York City and you'll get a pretty good sense of what's going on in Venezuela. Most of the people with money and common sense got out legally during Chavez's reign. Maduro is now apparently in custody. Mexico is a bigger problem. President Sheinbaum is a second generation red diaper baby with ties to the international communist movement. She isn't an entirely bad fit for her own plangent citizens, bar the crime, but they had nowhere to go but up. That said, she is a profound threat to America, including legal Mexican citizens, who can't like her much. But we can't bomb Mexico. We shouldn't bomb anyone. But we can tariff her into submission.
Still, I wish it was all about the Miss Universe pageant.
Definitely confusing. Sounds like Trump is doubling down on the Dominion/Stolen election gambit and Venezuela being at the epicenter? The left will predictably huff and puff defending the honor of poor Venezuela. Lots of “constitutional crisis” hysterics. In actuality, they will be thankful the Somalian fraud iceberg has been pushed out of the news cycle.
Steve - more importantly - with American's new found interest in ethnic fraud: Do you think the alleged vast Armenian Medicare fraud gets the spotlight? As a fellow resident of the San Fernando Valley - I sure hope so.
There's a little strip mall near me that has two more or less permanent resident businesses and three store fronts that change every six months or so and have nothing much visible from the street. At some point they were threatening to open a little coffee shop for months then one day grand opening next day grand closing. Recently a medical equipment store opened up and you can see inside and it carries the kind of stuff you'd expect for low level medicare fraud.
I thought that the Trump administration had already scrapped the MENA (Middle Eastern or North African) category that the Biden administration had added to the 2030 US census, but apparently that hasn’t happened yet:
Strategically, bombing them and cutting off the head makes sense for the US. Maduro has been plainly antagonistic to the US with the drugs and the gangs and cozying up to Iran and Russia.
But I can’t shake my gut feeling that I just don’t like it.
And, as with Cuba, we have a critical mass mostly of law-abiding, educated, self-supporting (and enormously well-dressed, why, I don't know) Venezuelans who fled here but are committed to bring their home country to freedom and prosperity.
Venezuela controls about 18% of the world's oil reserves. It has also has a government that is hostile to the United States while being a core part of thr Western Hemisphere. Was Iraq really so traumatic that basic superpower housekeeping had to be put off for so long? 4000 troops is a tragedy...BUT...don't you guys have a global hegemon to run*?
Regardless, with Venezuela, a Monroe Doctrine oil cartel would control about a third of global oil reserves. It still would not be as much as OPEC (even minus Venezuela) but it would be enough to hold a veto on prices. This would be an excellent thing for the US, especially since the US is much better at extracting the stuff than anyone else.
*10 times that died of gun-related injuries in the United States in 2023.
Lmao. You've flattened a 15 year attempt to make Switzerland out of a population of Iraqis into exactly the same thing as a few hour operation to detain the Venezuelan leader and negotiate a new government into place. That's hysterical.
Lmao, 0% chance that happens. Trump is speaking like he always speaks. Weird how you can recognise this in other contexts, when it doesn't set off your hysteria...
Sure, they've got lots, but IIRC, Venezuelan oil is extremely heavy and "sour". It is far less desirable than the average, and requires far more effort to refine. Back when it was freely available, our refineries were set up to handle it, but I wonder if that is still true. In any case, it is not a fungible substitute for other world supplies.
Plenty of U.S. refineries are still optimised for heavy sour - especially along the Gulf Coast, and probably a majority by capacity.
Venezuelan crude isn’t fully fungible, but it doesn’t need to be. Discounted heavy barrels are still highly attractive to the refineries designed to run them.
I have no clue as to what's going to happen in Venezuela, and Iran for that matter even though you didn't ask, but whatever happens I just hope we don't end up importing more useless and parasitic turd worlders from those shitholes. Thanks, Steve.
1) It’ll be interesting to watch the spastic gymnastics of the EU leaders and Sir Keir as they struggle for a response
2) America’s greatest ally will accelerate their ethnic cleansing and genocide of the native inhabitants of the territories they occupy, possibly using their new friend Somaliland to park those they haven’t butchered.
3) VVP would be mad not to clear the Black Sea coast and leave a few bits for Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.
4) Xi will be on the phone to Taipei in Mandrin and they will answer very very politely, I understand they converse in Mandarin.
5) The Japanese will turn the perfectly designed switch on their Prime Minister’s desk which gives them functioning nukes and delivery systems within 72 hours.
6) My investments will go down, President Trump’s friend’s investments will go up.
I think having an anticastro Cuban American as Secretary of State might be a bigger factor. How much of US foreign policy is directed by siding with one side in a foreign civil war?
The only thing I know about Venezuela is there is a Middle Eastern Christian diaspora there and educated bourgeois people were calling second and third cousins in the US with whom I was personally acquainted, who they had never seen nor spoken to, and asking for money to buy food. Every family's goal was to try and get at least one relation of government job. And that's all I know about Venezuela.
If we must be globohomo cop, and apparently we must, it's refreshing to see attention paid to our own hemisphere.
Re. Venezuela: I'm all for "sticking it to" anybody we don't like, but reinforcing the Russian precedent of invading sovereign countries because you feel like it is NOT going to end well for the world, nor the US.
Now it's China's turn.
And PS. Re. Venezuela: As in Iraq and Afghanistan, "you broke it, you bought it". And look at how that turned out.
I never bought that rule. In this case, did we break it? Couldn't the VP just step into the president's role and run the country with a deep sense of fear that she might be next? Couldn't they later have monitored elections with the results being respected for fear of a repeat?
What do you think? "What was Hillary thinking when she and her brain trust came up with that jaw-dropper of a closer?"
Neither party gives an [expletive] about "independents" or "swing voters" unless they are in desperate trouble and give in to the consultants. All they want to do is throw red meat to the looneys. And Hillary in 2016 was surfing to her coronation. Nobody expected Trump to be a serious threat. Not Hillary, not the consultants, not the media, not the GOP establishment, not the Russians, and not even Donald J. Trump, who was in it as a publicity stunt and because it was a way to pied-piper cheering throngs to shout his name, which is to him what cocaine is to anyone else.
She threw that bit to the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar white women who were her core constituency, and they ate it up.
By contrast, in 2020, the Democrats were in abject panic. They installed the blandest old white man they could dig up, and ran the whole campaign to "independents" and "swing voters" for "normalcy". And after they won, they crept out of the Trojan horse and showed their true colours, and made Donald J. Trump look like the calm, rational one the next time around, which was quite an accomplishment.
I don't know if Dems were more in abject panic, or the Tech Bros. After all, even with potential fraud, it was Google and Facebook that swung the election - the latter by registering voters in pro-D counties of swing states. That was a huge effort that cost on par with all the registered donations given to Democrats.
However, the Democrats didn't honor their bargain after 2020.
There's a video going around of what are possibly Chinook helicopters flying low over a city. Their rotors make a muffled thumping sound that's distinctively different than the sound of regular helicopter rotors. I suddenly realized that I'd never heard that sound before. A sound like that means you're in big trouble.
That is almost certainly blade slap, which any helicopter will do if while close to cruise speed it is descending slowly, into its own rotor-tip vortices. This is not particularly hazardous and on the flight deck itself you just hear it, not feel it, but at least in civilian contexts it is discouraged. Mainly for noise-abatement reasons. My guess is that military instructors frown on it too, but it can be difficult to avoid and there may be situations where you very unofficially want your enemy to hear that thumping. It is not a good-news sound.
I know rather less about Venezuela but not absolutely nothing about Venezuela. Let’s see...some years ago, but not too many years ago because the plaque called it the Bolivarian Republic thereof, I saw on Madeira some indication that the Venezuelan ambassador had been there. Not sure why, although there has been a long history of people emigrating from Portugal to Venezuela. And what else? Oh, I once read a very entertaining book titled Blood and Oil: Memoirs of a Persian Prince, by a guy who’d fled the Iranian revolution (the last one? The previous one?) and relocated to Venezuela, with which he had already had dealings when it and Iran were helping form OPEC. And I have a recollection, from my one visit to Venezuela in 1993, of bars actually displaying liquor licenses. I’d never seen anything of the sort anywhere else in Latin America. Not once in Latin America have I been drinking and got to wondering about the legality of it.
Oh, one more thing: I was in Colombia when Chávez died and it got a lot of TV coverage. A cabbie told me this was the event of the decade, no wait the century, which seemed on either timescale an exaggeration but if you live right next to Venezuela, this is apt to give you a certain perspective. Now that I try to recall this, the cabbie’s words exactly, I am unsure if he actually said “event” or “man,” and whichever it was, whether he was referring to the man’s death or the man’s works. Also, now that I think of it, what was really getting coverage was not so much the passing of the Venezuelan leader, whose medical treatment had been semi-secret, as the shopping of Venezuelans themselves, who were obviously worried about civil unrest. Latin America: it isn’t always something but it’s often something. It’s gratifyingly varied. You can do a lot of lumping there and a lot of splitting too.
I was in Cuba on a two week long mission trip in 2013 when Chavez died. The only time I saw automatic weapons (Uzi-like appearance) was at the “voluntary” “parade of grief and solidarity with the Venezuelan people” in Pinar del Rio.
Cuba is dependent upon Venezuela for its oil. Cuba has next-to-no foreign exchange resources and so pays for the oil by sending doctors to Venezuela (and now cartel dominated areas of Mexico) for two year long details, from which some don’t live long enough to return.
As far as I can tell, we have more reason to go to war with Mexico for all the Chinese Fentanyl coming from there. I feel a bit lost on this whole Venezuela thing as well.
The population of Mexico is about 130 million while Venezuela is about 30 million. And you can walk from Mexico to America. So "Invade the World, Invite the World" is a bigger threat with Mexico than with Venezuela. But I dunno...
Rubio hopes that freeing Venezuela will collapse the Castro regime?
Major pressure on Iran, also. The mullahs are diluting the super heavy sour Venezuelan crude with their better quality stuff to make it refinable. This will eliminate their ability to get hard currency by selling either the blended crude or product refined from it.
And on China, too.
Cheap oil from Venezuela is one of the few things that keep Cuba going.
I think it is for practice. Cuba is next. I wonder what the pretense will be.
Trump is working with victory-untested and potentially disloyal troops. In such a case, starting with a small challenger is better. Look at Trump's peer situation - Putin prosecuted several wars in Chechnya and Georgia successfully before he took on Ukraine.
Disloyal leadership and middle management, yes. And I agree that could be a problem in a larger conflict. Any leadership that steps out of line will likely be met with the full punishment. Hegseth is not fucking around; and honestly, I get the feeling that he really enjoys war. Maybe even in a bit of a sadistic way…
Complex things have to happen in the right order. This sets things up to better deal with Mexico.
Because it’s easier to conquer Venezuela than Mexico and with less blowback of all kinds. Disastrous decision for Trump. He’s turning into everything he said he wouldn’t be.
Nothing disastrous. For example, if Trump says the US is interested in Greenland, after Venezuela is done, everyone will believe him.
I don’t like Maduro but am tired of aggressive foreign policy that doesn’t directly and immediately impact Americans. America first means focus is on citizens in the U.S. not bad guys abroad.
America First without Monroe's Doctrine doesn't work. Ever. Besides, in a neighborhood with toughs, if you aren't tough you are road kill.
No, he’s not. He’s against pointless “forever wars” and against trying to change distant and incompatible cultures like Iraq and Afghanistan. Venezuela is in our hemisphere, not Muslim, and was a thriving democracy before the commies took over.
You cannot have read much about Venezuela if you believe Carlos Andres Perez was a paragon of democracy.
I didn’t mean to imply he was, or that things were perfect, just they were one of the most successful countries in the region before Chavez.
It was a functioning democracy prior to Chavez. “Thriving” is pushing it.
If by functioning you mean not sending hundreds of thousand of illegals and asylum- seekers to the U.S., then ok. Venezuelans also voted for socialism and when it didn’t pan out, just fled for the U.S.
I’m tired of my country being the dumping ground for the world’s failures.
Seems stupid indeed. Unless it was for oil.
Dunno.
It’s definitely about oil. Always has been. The other justifications are a distraction.
Reduce Chinese and Russian influence, reduce funds for the IRGC, and cut off Cuba's oil.
They failed to do that already - US has actually stepped back from conflict with Russia and China - bullying a local country is what they are doing instead.
Stepping back from conflict in Russia is a very wise decision - it unbinds Trump's hands to go after interests in Venezuela, Panama and Greenland (or West-Central Canada). China is something else entirely.
Anyway, Trump 1 : Maduro 0 now. Let's see how it goes from here...
Forget Greenland and Canada. That would be extremely unwise.
Venezuela is far more unwise frankly.
But it is not happening - this is just trying to look like a local bully now US is no longer a credible global bully.
And an attempt to keep China out of Venezuela and hopefully deter the rest of S America from working with China
This is backwards and the score so far is
Mr & Mrs Maduro 2: rest of Venezuela 28,500,000
Venezuela is what happens when the old bully finds a bigger kid in the playground. He goes to his corner and smashes everyone near him. He can no long rely on reputation for being able to beat anyone. He must now rely on being the nasitest, most vicious, most unpredictable kid in school.
That is the point of the attacks on Venezuela. The obvious criminality is a feature, not a bug.
oil and silver on behalf of oligarchs.
Listen to today’s press conference. He spent a lot of time talking about oil.
Just watch what happens next in New York City and you'll get a pretty good sense of what's going on in Venezuela. Most of the people with money and common sense got out legally during Chavez's reign. Maduro is now apparently in custody. Mexico is a bigger problem. President Sheinbaum is a second generation red diaper baby with ties to the international communist movement. She isn't an entirely bad fit for her own plangent citizens, bar the crime, but they had nowhere to go but up. That said, she is a profound threat to America, including legal Mexican citizens, who can't like her much. But we can't bomb Mexico. We shouldn't bomb anyone. But we can tariff her into submission.
Still, I wish it was all about the Miss Universe pageant.
"Plangent". Had to look that one up.
Like it, fits.
Definitely confusing. Sounds like Trump is doubling down on the Dominion/Stolen election gambit and Venezuela being at the epicenter? The left will predictably huff and puff defending the honor of poor Venezuela. Lots of “constitutional crisis” hysterics. In actuality, they will be thankful the Somalian fraud iceberg has been pushed out of the news cycle.
Steve - more importantly - with American's new found interest in ethnic fraud: Do you think the alleged vast Armenian Medicare fraud gets the spotlight? As a fellow resident of the San Fernando Valley - I sure hope so.
There's a little strip mall near me that has two more or less permanent resident businesses and three store fronts that change every six months or so and have nothing much visible from the street. At some point they were threatening to open a little coffee shop for months then one day grand opening next day grand closing. Recently a medical equipment store opened up and you can see inside and it carries the kind of stuff you'd expect for low level medicare fraud.
An Armenian-American California Assemblymember's MENA Inclusion Act was signed into law in October by Gavin Newsom:
https://a41.asmdc.org/press-releases/20251006-california-finally-counts-its-middle-eastern-and-north-african-community
https://jweekly.com/2025/11/12/california-law-redefines-israelis-as-not-white/
I thought that the Trump administration had already scrapped the MENA (Middle Eastern or North African) category that the Biden administration had added to the 2030 US census, but apparently that hasn’t happened yet:
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/05/nx-s1-5634897/trump-census-race-categories-ethnicity-middle-east-north-africa
https://archive.is/EKDXy
Trump official signals potential rollback of changes to census racial categories
Hansi Lo Wang
December 5, 2025
Strategically, bombing them and cutting off the head makes sense for the US. Maduro has been plainly antagonistic to the US with the drugs and the gangs and cozying up to Iran and Russia.
But I can’t shake my gut feeling that I just don’t like it.
And, as with Cuba, we have a critical mass mostly of law-abiding, educated, self-supporting (and enormously well-dressed, why, I don't know) Venezuelans who fled here but are committed to bring their home country to freedom and prosperity.
Venezuela controls about 18% of the world's oil reserves. It has also has a government that is hostile to the United States while being a core part of thr Western Hemisphere. Was Iraq really so traumatic that basic superpower housekeeping had to be put off for so long? 4000 troops is a tragedy...BUT...don't you guys have a global hegemon to run*?
Regardless, with Venezuela, a Monroe Doctrine oil cartel would control about a third of global oil reserves. It still would not be as much as OPEC (even minus Venezuela) but it would be enough to hold a veto on prices. This would be an excellent thing for the US, especially since the US is much better at extracting the stuff than anyone else.
*10 times that died of gun-related injuries in the United States in 2023.
You forgot they’ll greet us as liberators. Can you honestly repeat such garbage two decades after Iraq?
Lmao. You've flattened a 15 year attempt to make Switzerland out of a population of Iraqis into exactly the same thing as a few hour operation to detain the Venezuelan leader and negotiate a new government into place. That's hysterical.
He just announced we are going to run Venezuela for the time being. Sorry you did not see what anyone observant could see coming.
Lmao, 0% chance that happens. Trump is speaking like he always speaks. Weird how you can recognise this in other contexts, when it doesn't set off your hysteria...
The situations are quite different. Venezuela used to be rich democracy before the commies took over, and they aren’t Muslim.
Actually if you look at per capita income I believe Iraq’s was higher than Venezuela’s in the early 90s (to look at a “before time” for both nations)
Sure, they've got lots, but IIRC, Venezuelan oil is extremely heavy and "sour". It is far less desirable than the average, and requires far more effort to refine. Back when it was freely available, our refineries were set up to handle it, but I wonder if that is still true. In any case, it is not a fungible substitute for other world supplies.
Plenty of U.S. refineries are still optimised for heavy sour - especially along the Gulf Coast, and probably a majority by capacity.
Venezuelan crude isn’t fully fungible, but it doesn’t need to be. Discounted heavy barrels are still highly attractive to the refineries designed to run them.
Why do so-called feminists go out of their way to make women look weak and fragile?
Men get their way by shedding blood, women get their way by shedding tears.
They just can't resist the temptation to play both sides of the coin.
I have no clue as to what's going to happen in Venezuela, and Iran for that matter even though you didn't ask, but whatever happens I just hope we don't end up importing more useless and parasitic turd worlders from those shitholes. Thanks, Steve.
Wow consequences of a full scale invasion?
1) It’ll be interesting to watch the spastic gymnastics of the EU leaders and Sir Keir as they struggle for a response
2) America’s greatest ally will accelerate their ethnic cleansing and genocide of the native inhabitants of the territories they occupy, possibly using their new friend Somaliland to park those they haven’t butchered.
3) VVP would be mad not to clear the Black Sea coast and leave a few bits for Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.
4) Xi will be on the phone to Taipei in Mandrin and they will answer very very politely, I understand they converse in Mandarin.
5) The Japanese will turn the perfectly designed switch on their Prime Minister’s desk which gives them functioning nukes and delivery systems within 72 hours.
6) My investments will go down, President Trump’s friend’s investments will go up.
Also other consequences I haven’t dreamt of.
I think having an anticastro Cuban American as Secretary of State might be a bigger factor. How much of US foreign policy is directed by siding with one side in a foreign civil war?
The only thing I know about Venezuela is there is a Middle Eastern Christian diaspora there and educated bourgeois people were calling second and third cousins in the US with whom I was personally acquainted, who they had never seen nor spoken to, and asking for money to buy food. Every family's goal was to try and get at least one relation of government job. And that's all I know about Venezuela.
If we must be globohomo cop, and apparently we must, it's refreshing to see attention paid to our own hemisphere.
I’d prefer we shore up our own country first. Lives and milllions will be wasted on more South American bullshit.
Latest headline is that what's-his-name Maduro has been "captured".
I heard "...and headed for a New York courtroom". You know, because of all the luck Trump has had with New York courtrooms.
Yeah, I thought that sounded odd.
Re. Venezuela: I'm all for "sticking it to" anybody we don't like, but reinforcing the Russian precedent of invading sovereign countries because you feel like it is NOT going to end well for the world, nor the US.
Now it's China's turn.
And PS. Re. Venezuela: As in Iraq and Afghanistan, "you broke it, you bought it". And look at how that turned out.
I never bought that rule. In this case, did we break it? Couldn't the VP just step into the president's role and run the country with a deep sense of fear that she might be next? Couldn't they later have monitored elections with the results being respected for fear of a repeat?
We own it in the sense that we will be blamed for anything that happens now, no matter what we do.
What do you think? "What was Hillary thinking when she and her brain trust came up with that jaw-dropper of a closer?"
Neither party gives an [expletive] about "independents" or "swing voters" unless they are in desperate trouble and give in to the consultants. All they want to do is throw red meat to the looneys. And Hillary in 2016 was surfing to her coronation. Nobody expected Trump to be a serious threat. Not Hillary, not the consultants, not the media, not the GOP establishment, not the Russians, and not even Donald J. Trump, who was in it as a publicity stunt and because it was a way to pied-piper cheering throngs to shout his name, which is to him what cocaine is to anyone else.
She threw that bit to the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar white women who were her core constituency, and they ate it up.
By contrast, in 2020, the Democrats were in abject panic. They installed the blandest old white man they could dig up, and ran the whole campaign to "independents" and "swing voters" for "normalcy". And after they won, they crept out of the Trojan horse and showed their true colours, and made Donald J. Trump look like the calm, rational one the next time around, which was quite an accomplishment.
I don't know if Dems were more in abject panic, or the Tech Bros. After all, even with potential fraud, it was Google and Facebook that swung the election - the latter by registering voters in pro-D counties of swing states. That was a huge effort that cost on par with all the registered donations given to Democrats.
However, the Democrats didn't honor their bargain after 2020.
🎯