I’m not going to speak cogently about the taking of Venezuela’s dictator. Or rather–
Look, there is vestigial unease about messing with other governments, yes, but think on it, they were messing with us big time. By adding and abetting Jihadis, Chicoms and Putin;s lackeys, by serving as a hiding place for every potential nasty who wanted to take a bite at us. And oh, yeah, by flooding us with the contents of their prisons, except those who ere in for political dissent.
Just because they were fighting an undeclared war, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight back.
Someone on Twitter was whining about how the “anti-war” right has disappeared. Meh. I don’t know that I was ever anti-war. I’m anti-endless-war that kills America’s sons and daughters. This raid, which took out a bad actor in the night and killed no Americans? I think the only people against it are self-identifying as villains.
And I’m not going to coherent on it. As many of you know I had family in Venezuela, and I believe I still have some. (Look, with my parents’ generation dying there are fewer and fewer channels of communication.) This one is PERSONAL.
Sic semper tyrannis
I’ve been crying at the videos of the celebrating Venezuelans, and laughing at the memes. There are a lot of memes. And so, without further ado, here is your Emergency, Special Edition Meme Post.
Echo in Venezuela! But with USA know-how and ability!
According To Hoyt 
May Venezuela end up with a government that embraces individual freedom and God, and rejects evil.
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Millei has already pledged any support Argentina can give, and he holds a weight that can only be found in a kindred spirit that has been there and come out swinging. I hope he can become a good friend of Venezuela.
Now, let’s see what Brazil tries to do…
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Sarah, I hope your family in Venezuela has held together under the Chavez and Maduro years. I imagine that it must be like having relatives in East Berlin.
Having strong just-freed free market states near Venezuela almost certainly figures in Trump’s calculus. And while they are probably promising more than they will do, Trump and Rubio will almost certainly find ways to use them to reduce the risk and cost to America.
How this will affect the thinking of Iran, Russia, and China is more than I can reason about.
In the years before Chavez, the conductor Ernesto Dudamel arranged a performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in Caracas. This symphony is sometimes called the Symphony of a Thousand because of the enormous forces it requires, an absolute minimum of over 300 performers: a huge Mahlerian orchestra, instrumental ensembles offstage, piano, celeste, symphonic organ, harmonium (sometimes given over to the organ), plus eight vocal soloists, a double four-part chorus, and a children’s choir.
Dudamel collected virtual every chorister in Venezuela of whatever age, and with just two rehearsals staged the largest performance of Mahler’s Eighth ever–over 1700 performers.
The Eighth has been called Mahler’s answer to Beethoven’s Ninth. It is utterly Mahler, and the complete inversion of everything else Mahler ever wrote.
It would be entirely fitting, when (and if) things settle down in Venezuela, for this performance to be repeated.
In the meantime, the original performance may still be available on youtube. If you can flush the kpop and mil-metal out of your veins for a couple of hours, I suggest giving it a listen. The final part is about Faust escaping damnation.
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There’s a joke that Sarah’s family is the s people, not the z people.
There’s a further joke about whether I mean terminal -s Portuguese, and terminal -z Spaniards, or Jews and Nazis. (Some Islamofascists may have gone refugee in Vennyland.)
Anyway, Maduro is from a Spanish speaking country, and Spanish is not Sarah’s original mother tongue. There’s this one thing that happened hundreds of years ago that people are still holding a grudge over.
Brazil is the South American country that does not speak Spanish.
I know it seems like a fairly academic distinction, but some of the people involved consider it to be a real issue.
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Er…. Bob? My dad’s younger sister went to Venezuela with her husband at 18? 19? (they married at sixteen). They had three children there. And grandchildren. And great grandchildren. and–
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I found links to Bernstein conducting each with similar orchestras.
8th is good. But seems a bit … over reached? Overly complex.
B’s 9th is still -way- my fave of the 2. There is such a subtle genius in the clarity of it.
And he was deaf as a post when he wrote it!
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LOL. I’m not actually a huge Kpop fan. That’s my husband’s thing. Metal, yes. But also Leonard Cohen and Kansas. And Shinedown and…. a lot of others :D
My bizarre thing with orchestral music is that I only like it in vivo. Recorded doesn’t work for me, and I can’t tell you WHY.
As for my family, a lot of the kids got sent to Portugal, Spain and yes Miami, though I didn’t know about that branch till recently. We should probably try to make contact at some point as they’re the children of the cousin who looked like me. (9 years older and blond, but other than that.)
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You must be a teep and enjoy “hearing” 60 people counting in their heads, interspersed with “Oh my goodness, what the heck is this conductor doing now?”
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amen.
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Thinking about the next steps to get Venezuela back to Venezuelans, how do you get control of the vast oil reserves under the PEOPLE’S control, and not the GOVERNMENT’S control? I think Sarah addressed this kind of idea in one of the Darkship Theives books, although that situation merely rhymes, and doesn’t sing along. Maybe something like all adult Venezuelans get one share of something like a Master Limited Partnership? I dunno, but that is a question that (among zillions of others) that has to be addressed.
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We do it for Alaskans just fine.
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The oil under Venezuela isn’t cheap to extract and refine. It’s heavy stuff, similar to Alberta’s oil. The existing oil apparatus is falling apart and in many cases non-functional due to a lack of maintenance after Chavez nationalized all of it.
The government isn’t going to be able to manage it like Mexico does with PEMEX. They’re going to need some foreign companies to come in and be willing to invest billions of dollars in the project. And when it comes to that sort of work, the best in the business are the Americans.
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SFBS Emergency Special Edition!
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The more I think about that John Lennon song the more I dislike it. It is an extra scoop of vanilla on hot apple pie that Maduro was singing it just the other day. Maybe he could “Revolution” by the Beatles.
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More like “Won’t get fooled again” by The Who. 😄
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
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Queen – Hammer to Fall
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And a favorite:
The Warrior Song
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Ahem. Go Army.
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You’re probably going to need another one of these in a couple of days, the way things seem to be going in Persia, I mean, Iran.
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I dunno.
Stuff has looked to have potential, for sure.
I have gotten modded, and am probably done for the night.
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Tomorrow….
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One of your, if not, THE BEST!
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I feel I could write cogently about this.
Probably won’t.
Fun to joke that the Norse dude Harald is afraid he is next on the list, but is untrue. Elements of this were not a surprise, and basically there is a clear pattern that allows Harald, Anthony Albanese, or Lai Ching-te to understand that they are not on such a list, and would have remedies if they did decide to become a serious problem for US interests.
So, decomposing the elements that could surprise: Is it a shock that drug policy is important to this adminstration? No, but more I may circle back to. Is this event entirely unannounced in diplomatic speech or military movements? No, we have been in the area, and talking for a bit. Is it a surprise that we can do it? Maybe, but especially for layman like myself, and for people associated with foreign governments, what the US military can really do is uncertain. I had concerns about various quality factors, but we shall see about more broadly and the long run. That Trump would go ahead maybe should not be a surprise, his intents are fairly clear on this, if we do not deceive ourselves first.
I think world leaders genuinely surprised may have deceived themselves.
The timing and the success was a surprise to me, but the rest was not.
Trump was trying to negotiate the guy out, and I think will not be moving to execute him immediately either. Future plans and choices on the punishment end, or on the foreign policy end are not clear to me.
Taking fentanyl seriously as a major driver of US policy basically winds up being a counter to the Democrat simps and symps of the world.
75k dead per year, is more than the 10k dead of shootings. Some of those latter very legitimate self defense.
There are like four goals of how certain people proceeded in 2020. 1. ‘too many blacks shot’ 2. george floyd/blm 3. covid 4. getting Biden in and Trump out. There are arguments for simply dismissing and ignoring the fentanyl deaths, but those do not hold if we cannot ignore and dismiss George Floyd’s death. First two were rated important enough to trade against crippling the economy (3), and for the sake of crippling the economy. (4)
The fentanyl is a goal for the PRC.
Any additional screwing of Russia and or Iran by changing the oil market is a good.
Trump told people that he had some specific problems with the guy he just removed, and if the world did not believe Trump that is maybe on them.
Trump was willing to negotiate the guy out, and the other party would have perhaps preferred the terms of a negotiated exit.
I dunno. We shall see.
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If I was head of a cartel I’d be asking myself “I wonder if snatching up Maduro was the only operation the U.S. has been practicing?”
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And I think I’ll sleep somewhere tonight and tomorrow night and somewhere else overmorrow.
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In between …. NOT meeting with China envoys. Just saying …
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Ya, Maduro good buddy how’s that cozying up to China, Cuba and Russia doing for you?”
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Didnt help Maduro to bed hop. We spotted his pattern and bagged him anyway.
Sleep tight, folks. We own the night.
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Very good.
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¡Qapla Carajo!
-That-
is how you do
-Raid-
To the bugbears of the world, “Sleep tight!”
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Also….
Start your planning at
Victory!
Define it -clearly-.And from there, work backwards to “you are here”.
Then, do only those things that lead to Victory!
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Doofus is over here purring up a storm in my lap. He doesn’t jumpscare when I laugh, he just snuggles. There is no way good nooz, bad nooz, or even no nooz affects the wee orangeness fuzzmonster. Happycat is nappycat.
Othercat is singing the song of his people by the window. He cares not for dictators, Commiescum or otherwise. Only pets, his lady love, being picked up, and murderizing the invaders.
Neighborcat agrees with him in this. All invasions must be met with immediate lethal violence. No birbs, squirrely commies, or verminous creeps shall he suffer to live. He takes his border security very seriously.
Nastycat slept through the whole thing. Well, almost the whole thing. There was the zoomies at 4, the hiding in the clock, the playtime with his orangeness, and then another nap that turned into a twofer. He’s not so much antisocial as just crazy, and we’re the only ones that tolerate his strangeness. He and the pink dino are up on the library shelf, occasionally waking up to peer at me and Doofus, then going back to more important business.
By and all, the globe spins, babies and kittens are getting born, and an overinflated ego or two got popped today. It was a good one, today. May we receive another, someday soonish, in this life.
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“I don’t know that I was ever anti-war. I’m anti-endless-war that kills America’s sons and daughters.”
That! A thousand times!
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I am pro Victory.
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Earlier this evening I said to C, “So Donald Trump is a superhero. One played by Robert Downey Jr. . . .”
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re: air superiority
I’m still agnostic on quite a lot of modern US doctrine.
I basically do not think that I know anything. I need my hand held to understand how it was implemented and successful in the past.
Thus I am not entirely confident that it will always work well in the future.
I would say that I do not know how planes work, and even more so I do not know how conventional wars work.
I probably am jealous of LM, NG, Bell Helicopter, and the like. They seem to know how to design and build stuff.
(I’ve gone about learning to do stuff in ways that seem remarkably stupid, in hindsight.)
Anyway, the kids are all right, and I should not be such a worrywort.
re: undocumented
“No war should be illegal.”
Re: in this house
“right on, brother wojack!”
re: philosophy, and endless war
I’m basically for war.
Or, rather, my desire for peace leads me to understanding a necessity for some wars, and also I can be fanboyishly enthusiastic for the trappings of warfare.
fundamentally, human populations will continue to birth dissenters from peace. Civil police, and or capital punishment, are some elements of answering these dissenters. Warfare is another tool in that necessary toolbox, and sometimes the dissenters are well enough organized that no less intense a tool suffices.
Peace exists because of people who kill, intimidate, or imprison the dissenters from peace. Peace between nations somewhat involves nations that have internally suppressed their share of the peace dissenters, and additionally see grounds for peace as well between the nations.
There are two houses in the world. There is the house of peace, which is the house of submission to the US constitution. There is the house of war.
Maduro, the Mullahs, Putin, Xi, etc. are of the house of war, adn bring chaos into the world.
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I’m with you on that. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law. If, for example, Muslims in the U.S. will not subordinate sharia to the U.S. Constitution, then they are at war with us and can legitimately be compelled to submit.
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–
Yes. Both a thousand times.
What are the odds that the now freed people of Venezuela elect to become America’s 51st state? After all, they are the ones who get to decide first. Take that liberals.
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They would love to. But we don’t need that mess. Seriously.
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I know the US doesn’t need the mess that Venezuela represents. Anymore than the US needs the mess that Mexico represents. The Venezuelan people have to start the process, but the US has to accept it. OTOH might make other existing territories or even some Canadian provinces go “wait a minute!”, “Us first. No stealing our thunder.” Which wouldn’t be a huge mess.
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Re the “Air Superiority Apology Form”: I’m pretty sure the zillionaire Anduril guy with the mullet, aloha shirts, and beardlet is the one pitching drones for everything. (search…search…search) There he is, Palmer Lucky. Notably his solutions are way cheaper than LockMartBoeGenDynCorp’s stuff, so quantity as a quality all its own is much more within reach. But even from him I have not heard “quadcopters from Aliexpress will kill all the F-22s”.
And it would be tough to do a snatch and grab with drones.
Elon is the guy who’s all in on spaceships and electric cars. And flamethowers sold at retail. I have not heard him opine on drones much.
Oh, and Nightstalkers for the win.
And I guess all the A-10s were busy over in Syria, so the F-16s had to try and fill their shoes as substitutes from the bench.
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Not really an appropriate mission profile for A-10s.
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Well, escorting helicopter insertions and extractions was one of the base mission profiles (from the Vietnam-era A-1 Sandy/SPAD/Skyraider) that justified the A-10 in the first place. The big gun and anti-armor role was merged to that specification from the USAF Fulda Gap Defense priority from the ‘70s, but the basic mission set was CAS for troops in contact and helicopter escort, both of which the fast movers were not as good at just because they’re so fast.
Once the air defenses were suppressed, covering and escorting the Nightstalker helos, since this was at base a helo raid, should have been right up the A-10s alley.
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I don’t know I bet there great at bombing Mausoleums…
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Well, true. But the Gatlings were designed to bust heavy armor tanks – they would almost certainly do a very good job on marble.
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Long answer stuck in mod: short(er) answer is helo escort was a baseline mission profile the A-10 inherited from the A-1 SPAD/Sandy escorting Jolly Green Giants for downed pilot extractions during the Southeast Asian Late Unpleasantness, so it is nominally right up the warthogs alley.
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Elon made some public statements.
He is a very intelligent, very rich, and very successful man, and that tempts him to think he can do everything better.
And, yes, the Department of Defense seems like it should have a lot of actual waste, and a lot of challenged procuremetn programs.
It was not politically palatable to talk about bringing Elon in with a free hand, but surely some of the insiders are holding grudges about a few of Elon’s statements.
(I flat out do not automatically assume that Musk understands enough about insider and mission needs to do a better job of delivering this, that, or the other bit of hardware.)
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Drones are great if you’re attacking troops and vehicles. Be it noted, ships are vehicles. The nice thing about a drone is that you don’t care if it gets destroyed. It’s a cheap munition that’s piloted by a human. Same price as an artillery round, basically.
Where it would get interesting is flying an attack into heavy air defenses. You deploy drones from close-in by whatever means, they all run off to attack the dispersed air defense missile batteries and radars, then your air comes in and splatters the target. Or in this case, drags the target out of bed and flies back to a ship with him.
I don’t know that’s what happened here, but I’m not going to be surprised if I find out it did when the “Three Minute War” book comes out.
I strongly hope that Palmer Lucky and company were taking notes, and thinking up new ways to make their drones faster/better/cheaper. More is better.
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With the A10 being retired soon, units currently running the Hog will be switching to the F16
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And the CAS mission will be filled by drones, according to The Experts Who Will Not Be The Guys On The Radio Asking For CAS. And the helicopter escort mission won’t matter anymore, because helos are obsolete in the modern battlefield, because little quadcopter electric drones from aliexpress.
We shall see.
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Jetpacks could maybe do extractions. But it would be kinda annoying and dangerous.
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WRT the “why is it always you three” meme, the answer in this case is “we didn’t need to bring the 82nd Airborne Division. This time.”
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Oh, and as a veteran of Operation JUST CAUSE, I must say that the timing of this was exquisite.
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Wasn’t it, though?
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I am tickled to have El Presidente brought here to NYC. It’s a not-terribly-subtle message to our new commie Mayor, and from his tweets it seems he’s gotten the message and is unhappy about it.
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That said, here’s a relevant meme I’m surprised you missed:
https://x.com/ChrisStigall/status/2007536190971621878
(Unless it’s up there and I missed it?)
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And, in the context of bombing Hugo Chavez’s mausoleum:
https://x.com/ChestyPullerGst/status/2007500779058540865
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I hadn’t seen it! Will be in the roundup on Saturday.
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YES!
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Just to show you how Evil Trump really if he brought Maduro’s wife with him, I can hear it now.
“So Mister big Dictator tell me again how Trump is just a clown who won’t do anything?” Mrs. Maduro asked.
“Oh the Chinese and the Russians will save us, right Mister Bigshot?” Mrs. Maduro asked.
“You made me trade all my beautiful dresses for an Orange Jumpsuit, do you know what Orange does to my complexion, and Oh my shoes” Mrs. Maduro complained.
Bwahahahahahahaha
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Maduro: Yanquis, can you just throw me out of the helicopter now?
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The Feds are alleging that they can prove that Mrs. Maduro/Flores was involved in a criminal conspiracy to traffic cocaine within Vennyland. Including directing the usual murders and beatings etc.
(I got modded, but some legal documentation has been released. Very wild; if true, the Trump admin seems to have actually been honest about this being law enforcement motivated. )
We shall see.
And we are early enough in January that this might still not be the wildest and most insane thing to be done.
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I remember 2020. And the comments about how Brexit was not the big story of the first quarter, after all.
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Mrs. Maduro (I like the misspelled “Muduro”) is lucky neither endured the Romanian Necktie Christmas Day treatment by the Venezuelan citizenship.
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Maduro is “Ripe”. I swear I’m not making this up.
Kind of like the first name of Brazil’s president is Lula — squid.
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How about we start by telling the Venezuelans, ‘Look we’ll help you out, but we’re not paying for shit, you’re smart enough to figure it out on your own, time to get busy’.
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https://twitchy.com/dougp/2026/01/03/trump-and-rubio-explain-the-lack-of-congressional-notification-it-only-takes-one-word-n2423495
Can anyone tell me why it’s rational to believe we can continue to share a country with an opposing party working for our enemies?
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My gut reaction is that taking action against the opposition party (as a group) falls under the rule of “Don’t give the government the power to act against the people you dislike, because a future government might use that power against the people you like”. ☹️
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“Do not take counsel of your fears.” attributed to Andrew Jackson, Stonewall Jackson, or Gen Patton.
Not because that won’t happen, but because any analysis of our current enemies says it’s going to happen anyway.
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IMO we currently have Laws that can be used on an individual basis to take down those assholes.
I call it “fighting the war intelligently”.
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And if we do this one at a time, they win by attrition.
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:points at literally dozens arrested, charged, and sentenced, for various public support fraud:
The actively growing result of people working inside of the system.
Got started when the people subverting the system were still in power.
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And I see those. But they have an endless supply of dupes, and someone is organizing them.
https://open.substack.com/pub/amuseonx/p/why-yesterdays-pro-maduro-protests?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
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The numbers of dupes are thinner. it’s not an endless supply. As a young lady told me years ago (and I didnt’ believe her) they’re not dupes. they’re PAID.
Yes, taking USAID out thinned their numbers. I bet you taking Venezuela, weakening China and Iran will take more of the money.
Let the process work.
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While the money may be running out for the Paid Dupes, there’s another factor IMO.
The number of people “willing to take the Fall” for the Leadership may lessen if they see that they are the ones suffering while their “Masters” go on with their lives.
Of course, the “minions” may see that their families suffer and the “Masters” do nothing for the families of the “minions”.
IE They may be willing to “suffer” for the Cause but not so willing to see their families suffer for the Cause especially if they get the idea that their “Masters” care nothing about the Cause only about gaining Power.
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The top won’t be punished. They’re always the last. because they’re better defended.
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And this is what people are increasingly refusing to accept.
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No, they’re really not. Steve, yes, they are mad and this eventually means the punishment will come, though I venture to say they’re already being punished by the money through going away. They have NOTHING else, not even knowledge of how to keep the money they have.
BUT most people are taking a sigh of relief that they can now afford groceries and gas. It is us who are extremely online who are super-mad. BUT we’re not the people. If you think we are you’re falling for the bots and agitators buzz.
And as for “there can be no peace and we can’t leave with people like this” I don’t want to write a whole post, but we DO believe in redemption. Tom Sowell, Reagan and Trump were once “those people.” Sowell was a COMMUNIST. So was my own dad in his youth.
As for not being able to live with them “must do something now” I refer you to Himself. If I recall the wheat and the tares will grow together till the last day. You’re never going to get rid of all the corrupt, greedy people who want to own others. This is a fallen world. You could drown the world in blood and they’d spring up again. The best you can do is battle them.
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Local (Eugene) regular gas is: $2.79/gal (Costco), $2.85/gal (Kroger, which means we’ve each paid $1.85/gal).
In Oregon, fuel is officially under $3/gal. Think of that. The fuel tax gradual climb is being put to the vote. Don’t know if it has activated or not because of the initiative. Note, know that the state has money in the appropriate (supposedly) untouchable (because specific taxes funded) fund for road repairs.
(*) Not “know someone, who knows someone, who heard”. While didn’t hear it directly, only one person removed from the source. Source is someone whose job is knowing how much is in their department budget line.
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And note that we were there just a few days ago, and the prices seemed amazing low *then*, but were still over $3/gallon, so it’s fallen even further over the weekend.
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They have A supply of idiots.
At least, in a couple of locations. We learned over the last few years that they have to work hard to move folks around, and look at the No Kings protest– even hijacking other events, they couldn’t make waves. They have trouble paying for the protesters.
And likely with foreign funding, at that– there was literally a communist party table at the one in New York, where the organic counter-protest of refugees in the US put on winter gear to go yell at the crazies.
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Yep, that.
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One way to prevent our enemies from using tax-exempt ‘non-profit’ organizations against us would be to eliminate taxes… 😛
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THIS THIS THIS THIS. I agree with that there Imaginos.
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Precisely.
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We can’t.
We also can’t split the country up and give the monsters half of it.
There is another way of dealing with the traitors, once and for all, if patriots would put down their country and western music and treat the internal enemy as the devils they are.
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Oh, you’re pro eternal war? Cool.
I refer you to Balkans. Don’t make me put on my sunglasses.
We’re winning just fine without THAT. Doind that is the surest way to lose. BAH.
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Americans are familiar with the notion of due process, and how bad the targeting of those who wish to dehumanize “the enemy” is.
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Magnificent operation. In more ways than one; imagine the consternation in smoke-filled back rooms around the world, as important people feel the cold hand of Retribution on their shoulders.
You know who’s nervous today?
#CarkMarney, PrimeMinisteer of the Peeple’s Republik of Kanuckistan. Because who’s been playing footsie with the #Chicoms for ten years? (And India, and Iran…) And who’s country runs more drugs into the USA than Venezuela?
If they can pluck #Maduro out of his own bed, surrounded by his armies and expensive air defenses, then #Carky can’t sleep soundly. I mean, he knew that before, but he probably thought foreign heads of state were untouchable.
Surprise.
So today, the State Funded Media of Kanuckistan is running all sorts of pearl clutching and “how could you?!” editorials, saying #OrangeManBad!!! but to me they seem a little apprehensive. Like maybe the party is over, the music stopped, the cops came to shut it down, but they’re still drunk-dancing on the bar wearing the lampshade.
You know who else is nervous today? #WinnieThePooh. That guy just watched the Americans fly a Chinook helicopter, which is a big, fat, slow, flying target, into and out of a better-defended place than Beijing, and nobody fired a shot at them. The super-duper S300V system from Russia didn’t even get a round off. The Russians have better sh1t than the Chicoms, so FatBoi is looking over his shoulder today.
My favorite meme is Forrest Gump. “And just like that, all the “No Kings!” protesters rallied in support of a Venezuelan dictator.” Because that’s literally what they’re all doing today, here in the FormerlyGreatWhiteNorth. They’re literally rallying with #FreeMaduro signs in Toronto.
Who wants to bet that those #FreeMaduro signs were paid for by a #SomaliLearingCenter account?
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I was highly amused by one of your fellow inhabitants who suggested that Carney should have the Canadian military escort the Mounties to arrest Trump for the Hague…..
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Oh, the signs? Some of Winnie’s boys…..
https://open.substack.com/pub/amuseonx/p/why-yesterdays-pro-maduro-protests?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
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*blink blink* I’m showing my age. I saw “Winnie’s boys,” and expected to find South African protests, “necklacing” and the like.
Yeah, Winnie Mandela. I’m edging toward old.
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Well, yes, that.
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The bit about Russian SAMs reminds me of an old joke, from the Six Day War:
Message from Cairo to Moscow: “Please stop sending surface to air missiles. Send surface to aircraft missiles instead.”
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https://blazingcatfur.ca/2026/01/04/hands-off-venezuela-demonstrators-rally-in-toronto-following-u-s-seizure-of-president-nicolas-maduro/#disqus_thread
Further to the Forrest Gump meme, I give you the Canadian Left.
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No way – You can’t fob that off on us. We give it back.
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My concern is whether the regime change will be handled better than that of Afghanistan and Iraq. I do not know how much socialist support exists in Venezuela; hopefully, not much. However, even a small group can cause chaos.
On a less serious note, I do hope that the White House security is capable of dealing with a Spetsnaz drop (more likely to be a flash mob of European Union bureaucrats or the UK Prime Minister with an international arrest warrant).
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In recent years Spetsnaz troops from the Formerly Red Army have proven to be less of an invisible ninja elite commando force than was once the perception. By all evidence from Ukraine they are now more along the lines of mob enforcer goons.
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So White House staff just need to be on the lookout for hordes of EU bureaucrats, extensively trained on expense-account lunches.
Easy to spot, they are the one’s removing the “dead names” from the portraits and forming a quorum to debate the proper size of cheese.
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Venezuela was VERY socialist. is it still? I doubt it. They voted this guy out, he just misunderstood it.
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It is widely believed by many countries that Edmundo Gonzalez won the 2024 Venezuelan election, though Maduro claimed not, and Gonzalez had to flee to Spain to keep from being incarcerated (meaning killed) by Maduro. Maduro wasn’t about to give up control.
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Redstate has a link to the indictment, and this seems to explain much.
Indictment covers a conspiracy between Maduro, his son, his current wife, two of his minions, and a TdA leader. Two cocaine crimes, and two machine gun crimes are invoked with evidence and claims.
(I’m no doubt using ‘evidence’ incorrectly, I am not a lawyer, and this is not financial advice.)
Cocaine crimes include transporting within Vennyland for the cartels, and also selling Vennyland diplomatic credentials to traffickers.
There are also allegations of this involving I think around six major TCOs that transport Cocaine, but they clearly tried to organize this document for being coherent and targeted.
This has been filed a very long time in the SDNY, which is why they were transported there.
One sentence seems to imply that they wanted to have two or more of the defendants in custody, and available to the courts of the SDNY, before proceeding.
So the press release about this being a law enforcement mission supported by the military seems to be entirely correct.
They have two of the defendants, and can try them fairly in the SDNY. There they can be most easily prosecuted for conspiracy, and if convicted cases can be brought forward against other co-conspirators in a wider range of jurisdictions.
Five of the six defendants might have been available in Vennyland, and the two picked may have just been the two where the first opportunity was best for.
Without being able to convict for conspiracy, there might be a less clear of a line where other leaders of neighboring criminal regimes like Carney, Macron, and Starmer are concerned. We can answer that Macron has little to fear from this, if he has not been transporting Heroin across France for transport to the US, and if he has not been selling diplomatic passports to traffickers. (Terms of these Yahoos in office may be short enough to have limited time to get implicated in criminal conspiracies that do not involve rape.)
This is also not mentioning Fentanyl, so no mention of Jinpeng Xi. This is not covering so much conspiracies to manufacture cocaine, so the purchase of precursors does not lead directly back to Jinpeng Xi.
Cocaine is a long standing trade, and the networks have been in place for a while, and studied by US parties for a while. This is the point where where we may be most likely to have enough reasonably reliable information.
The criminal regime of Putin in the so called nation of Russia is almost certainly involved in US crimes, but this filing give the US government an out for not pursuing that option. Likewise, this is not very necessarily tied to politicians in the USA or the United Mexican States.
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yet?
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Sunday Smiles – HotAir
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They removed the head. Now they need to get rid of the rest of the cartels.
Make Venezuela Great Again!
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Alas, until we reduce our demand for “recreational” drugs, we cannot attack the astounding profits of smuggling dope.
If, andvit is a flimsy if, we can sufficiently terrorize suppliers, we might reduce the supply of foreign dope. Somewhat.
We can’t “ban” dope away any more than we can ban Sin.
Fentenyl-adulterated drugs kill tens of thousands of doers, often novice users. The “pros” don’t care and the “novices” either don’t believe or don’t care.
We could infiltrate the cartels and contaminate their product with VX and the survivors would shrug and keep puffing away. They are not quite sane.
We need to fight to better our culture to where the crap isnt cool or socially acceptable. Not by legislation, but by shaming dopeheads. Not celebrating them.
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Body Language Guy is a native Venezuelan in exile. He’s gentlemanly. Very level-headed.
The fact that he’s cheering on the destruction of Chavez’ little shrine, and cussing his enthusiasm for it, is proof enough that it needed to be done.
The Air Force got to have some fun also, but it was apparently more about support than taking a lead role. I don’t think our local folks were doing much about it, but who knows?
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https://instapundit.com/767090/
Factcheck: Of course the loudmouths do.
Much of academia has been paid by the federal government to produce propaganda in favor of domestic terrorism. Entire careers have been dedicated to this.
Books like ‘Dawn of Everything’ are apparently outright “peace does not exist, and even if it did it would be discriminatory”.
The worse problem is the native Citizens who grew up to believe this stuff.
The faculty of international origin can potentially be denaturalized and deported if they were members of a terrorist conspiracy while they were naturalizing. Like maybe their academic field or maybe the Democratic Party.
The same nonsensical legal theories that would improperly shield Maduro also shield faculty at US universities engaged in terrorist conspiracies.
Academics are necessarily too few in American society to hold power within American society by naked force of arms alone. They have no viable strategy that does not involve persuading Americans.
They have made academia into seemingly too much of a hothouse to really learn rhetoric (one of the liberal arts) very effectively. PC speech control, and the drum-circles-for-Tinkerbell hurt ability to understand broader audiences enough to persuade those audiences.
The academic response to their idjits going all in on a political weak horse? Their faculty idjits are trying to incite student idjits to terrorist violence, to scare Americans into backing down.
The collected quotes actually exhibit a little bit more range than is implied the headline.
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Dang!
Forgot the absolutely obligatory.
All your base are belong to us!
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The other interesting theory I’ve heard on this is it’s a good lever to crack open the Democrat corruption networks.
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Well, for starters, Smartmatic voting machines were involved in Venezuela.
https://miamiindependent.com/politics/2025/10/17/miami-grand-jury-indicts-smartmatic-noose-on-venezuela-tightens/
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