Speedbumps?
In the wake of the ‘regime change’ exit of President Maduro from Venezuela, there are a few unanswered questions, and a few other spots which seem to be drawing Presidential (ours, not Venezuela’s) attention. Let’s start with ground zero.
Originally it was assumed that the person we had acted like we were supporting, María Corina Machado, who was popularly supposed to have actually won their election (but, in a familiar refrain, was described as “cheated”) would take over. However, even though she has said that she would happily give the Nobel Peace Prize she was given to Donald Trump, a) they aren’t transferable and b) the Donald does not like losing and has since stated that she is not going to take over. In the interim, though, when people ask who will run the country, Trump has said that the US will. In actual fact, though, gangs of roving militia seemingly led by Diosdado Cabello (on whom our government has placed a $25,000,000 bounty,) look to be taking over instead of their ranking leader, Delcy Rodriguez.
Mobs of motorcycle-riding civilians often armed with assault rifles, known as colectivos, have been conducting intrusive searches and establishing checkpoints to identify and punish anyone showing support for Maduro’s removal from power, Reuters reported.
The reported crackdown began with a government directive to root out dissent against the Venezuelan regime. According to Reuters, a state of emergency decree published on Monday ordered police to “immediately begin the national search and capture of everyone involved in the promotion or support of the armed attack by the United States.” Fox News
Unless something changes, we may THINK we are going to run the country – but a good chunk of the citizenry does not seem to agree.
Venezuela is one of the oil-richest countries in the Western Hemisphere, which could be great. Donald Trump even said one of the reasons we went in for for their oil, right? He has been calling for a $100,000,000,000 investment in Venezuela’s crumbling oil infrastructure (crumbling since they nationalized the US assets which used to do their refining). Another somewhat problematic point – he thinks the oil infrastructure should be attractive to major petrochemical companies – but they don’t seem to think so.
Exxon’s chief executive Darren Woods said: “We have had our assets seized there twice and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen and what is currently the state.”
“Today it’s uninvestable.”
Officials (US – ed.) say they have been coordinating with interim authorities in the country, which is currently led by Maduro’s former second-in-command, Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez.
But they have also made clear they intend to exert control over the sales, as a way to maintain leverage over Rodríguez’s government. BBC
Sounds a lot like we may want to say we are in control, but not so much that it’ll be smooth sailing from now on.
And then there is Greenland. Owned by Greenland, Trump has been threatening to take it over by whatever means needed. This presents a few issues.
Greenland is owned by an ally and NATO member. Taking Greenland militarily would probably fracture NATO for good , which in a time of Russian imperialist actions, would bode poorly for both Europe and us. Come to think of it, if we just took Greenland, what difference would there be between Trump and Putin?
Greenland itself may be owned by the Danes, but they are moving slowly toward a less dependent relationship. That does NOT mean they are hankering for statehood, though. The relationship is probably described as far more distant than, say, Puerto Rico’s. Trump has suggested to buy it – not sure where those funds would come from. Is it asset rich under all that ice? Indeed, yes – but would the price we would need to pay offset that? What do we have in common with Greenland? Any of you fellas stationed there in the past want to comment?
The one that really makes me shake my head – Trump saying if Iran shoots any of its protesting citizens, we are “locked and loaded” and ready to intervene. Iran would be the biggest tar baby in the WORLD. (For those of you who may be unfamiliar with that term: go read Uncle Remus. If it offends you… grow a set.) They have a collapsing economy, their military surrogates have been spanked in Israel, Lebanon, Yemen, and pretty much everywhere, they have citizens rioting in the streets: LEAVE THEM ALONE. Their own people are kicking the crutches out from under the mullahs – we don’t need to give them a foreign threat to coalesce against. As someone famously said about the Walls of Jericho: “Let ’em topple.” (Bonus points if you know which movie without googling.)
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", 2024 Election
Visited Greenland way back in my Coastie days, awesome flounder fishing in Sondre Stromfjord. Some great hiking too, back when I was a tad more fit for the adventure. Thule AB (at the time) was quite an adventure as well as many of us never heard of Jagermeister back in 1981. It was taken off the shelf that first night.
No protest money left?
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”― Sun tzu, The Art of War
#47 uses hyperbolic speech as well as anyone to hide is true intentions. He’s NOT going to invade Greenland or land troops in Venezuela or Iran, but look how nutty, ridiculous, and disjointed NATO and others are acting. They’ll be whipped into a frenzy of frantic activity and then he’ll introduce a rational solution that’s a much more agreeable off ramp. BOOM!!! The deal is done.
I believe he calls that “The Art of the Deal”.
If we gave every man, woman and child resident of Greenland a million dollars for the country it works out to about $40 an acre for the whole country.
52,000 residents = $52B
1.3B Acres
52/1.3 = $40
I would say a bargain at five times the price. $258B? Five million dollars is enough for any prudent person to live nicely on for a life time and still have enough left to leave something to the kids. Lay the payment off over 25 years at $200K a year. With that much money one could enjoy a high standard of living practically anywhere in the world.
Of course they don’t want to sell so the whole thing is moot unless they change their mind. So far as the Danes go, they seem unworried. They have purchased billions in weapons and aircraft from the US so far, just this year (2026).
https://www.dsca.mil/Press-Media/Major-Arms-Sales/Article-Display/Article/4373826/denmark-agm-114r-hellfire-missiles
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/denmark-to-buy-us-patrol-planes-despite-greenland-rift
Whatever Trump is saying about invading Greenland he would likely be impeached if he made that happen. NATO is a rare, congressionally ratified treaty. Congress would issue a formal opposition to the termination of the treaty, which would almost certainly happen, given the number of Republicans in opposition to disbanding NATO. That would make it eligible for the Court to hear the case to restore the treaty or they could move directly for impeachment.
The president has no power to make treaties on his own so he would be in violation of his oath to support and defend the Constitution. This is the basis for most past impeachments in one form or another. Again, given that many Republicans support NATO, it remains to be seen if they would go nuclear on Trump, but I think it likely.
Are we done being the world’s cops? Making other countries contribute to defense one way or another.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/01/11/u-k-asks-germany-and-france-eu-nato-to-support-expanded-presence-in-greenland/
Free and fair elections in Venezuela are still a bit far away. If Trump believed that the UN was actually a functioning body he might have asked for a peace keeping force and election observers. Machado didn’t run in the last election because she was in hiding and she wasn’t elected anything. Putting her in charge actually is even less credible than Mudaro, so this is a very bad suggestion passed around by a lot of talking head media who want the mission to fail. Should she win a future election, she should jump right in there.
Instead the US has to rely on deep imbedded assets to run things. How deep and how high you might ask? Even if knew for sure I couldn’t say. But you might look at who has been making things happen for the oil companies even if they are talking out of their rear end.
Trump isn’t really running anything there anyway, it is pretty much all Rubio and the CIA. You might want to look at the initial post-op press conference with Rubio standing behind him. Every time Trump goes off script Rubio freezes. Every time he goes back on script Rubio starts nodding. Pretty sure this wasn’t intentional, probably he had been without sleep for 48 hours or so.