Jack Smith in Bizzarroland

January 27, 2026

How fitting if in the end the only person criminalized for January 6 is . . . Jack Smith. The special prosecutor.

Of course some 1500 people were convicted for violent crimes committed that day. But Trump’s pardons voided those verdicts. Trump himself was initially charged as the center of the conspiracy to steal the presidency. Also for his stealing classified documents. He curses out Jack Smith, the prosecutor, as “deranged” and a “criminal” who should himself be prosecuted. Trump’s Department of “Justice” will no doubt cook up a case.

Laying the groundwork, the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan, called Smith to testify. “Our investigation,” Smith stated there, “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.” And tried to silence and intimidate potential witnesses against him. Much of the evidence actually came from Republicans who’d voted for Trump.

But every Republican in that hearing lambasted Smith as some rogue prosecutor acting improperly for partisan motives, as “election interference.” They’ve long been screaming about “weaponization” of the machineries of justice. Trump now deems this the worst such case in all history!

Reality: the Biden Justice Department, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, desperate to avoid any whiff of politics, dithered for two years before belatedly appointing the special prosecutor. That inexcusable delay was the true miscarriage of justice here, enabling Trump to get off the hook; the cases had to be abandoned when he was elected again, due to a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president (something not in the Constitution). Had the cases gone to trial, conviction would have been highly likely.

Also reality: Trump lost the 2020 election (for obvious reasons). Even his toady Attorney General Barr said so. Every lawsuit seeking to overturn the results was thrown out of court. An Arizona audit, conducted by Republican partisan hacks, ended by finding more Biden votes. Trump made up the “stolen election” lie from nothing only because his damaged psyche couldn’t face being a loser.*

Yet not only have Republicans made that lie gospel, but after it sparked the violence of January 6, they adopted a further gospel that that event was something innocent, not at all what we saw with our own eyes.

They even say the real criminals were those involved in the January 6 prosecutions. All have been fired. And despite Republican blather about “weaponizing” justice, it’s they who, with no sense of irony, now so blatantly weaponize it against Jack Smith and other people Trump hates. That Congressional hearing itself a perversely prime example.

Politics properly involves disagreements over principles and policy, and even differing interpretations of facts. But what we have here is something else entirely: war upon reality. Untruth has indeed become a 1984-ish core principle of this Republican regime, seen in its gaslighting about the Good and Pretti murders in Minneapolis.** Shoving those obvious lies down our throats, just to flaunt their power. This is today’s deeply sick Bizzarro Republican cult.

* Another big GOP lie was the “Russia hoax.” Russia did help Trump in the 2016 election. So did the FBI — publicizing its investigation of Clinton’s emails, but not of Trump’s Russia ties. Reopening the Clinton probe right before the election killed her candidacy.

** Calling them “domestic terrorists,” when it’s obvious the domestic terrorists are the ICE thugs.

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Greenland — America Pays a Big Price — And Gets Nothing

January 24, 2026

An Albany Times-Union editorial called Trump’s Greenland threats “insane” and “madness;” and said the European Union must impose harsh economic sanctions against the U.S., urging readers to support them.

Wow.

Then Trump claimed to have made a deal, getting everything desired. Standard Trump bullshit. In fact, this supposed “deal” — there’s nothing on paper — merely gives us what we already had before this mess. That is, the option to have bases and troops in Greenland, to bolster its defenses (against Russia or China), pursuant to a 1951 treaty. Trump’s insistence on owning the island, and his tariff threats, are forgotten. (For the moment, at least.)

So, issue resolved, no harm done?

Wrong.

Huge harm. Though we get nothing new, it’s costing us dearly. For all Trump’s babble about our “security,” he’s undermined it, by wrecking our already fraught relations with our (former) key allies, and making us globally reviled. His Greenland nonsense now compounded by his belittling NATO nations having fought beside us in Afghanistan, where great numbers of their soldiers were killed.

All this has led key European leaders (and notably Canada’s Prime Minister Carney) to make clear that they’ve finally had enough. No more appeasement and butt kissing; instead telling America, once and for all, go fuck yourself.

Because Trump’s threats against Greenland (and them) shockingly violated a key element of the world order that America itself had stood for. At least since Woodrow Wilson, in the wake of WWI, enunciated the principle of national self-determination — barring the conquest of any land against its people’s wishes. WWII’s Atlantic Charter institutionalized this.

Greenlanders did not want to be U.S. subjects. That should have been the end of it. But Trump never even considered this. Taking Greenland by force would have been a crime against its unwilling inhabitants, and its fellow NATO countries, sworn to defend each other. The threats made America a rogue outlaw nation, shredding our moral credibility in the world. Backing off doesn’t restore it. And remember it’s not just Trump; we Americans insanely elected him. Europeans realize that even if our next president returns to sanity, the one after could reverse that. We can no longer be trusted.

All this also eludes Stephen Miller, in his idiotic pronouncement that the world works by power and force. Posturing as the tough “realist.” In fact he and Trump are naive fools. Knowing no history, clueless how the world order America built after WWII, with our system of steadfast alliances, and the principle of inviolate borders, prevented major power warfare over three quarters of a century, to the great benefit of humankind — and our own benefit above all.

If Greenland could be seized by force, then so can Ukraine, or Taiwan. Not a recipe for the kind of world we should want to live in. Instead, the law of the jungle. Not good for anyone’s national security, including ours.

This is indeed “insane” and “madness” — self-mutilating — deeply sick.

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Israel’s Kristallnacht — And Minnesota’s

January 21, 2026

“Kristallnacht” was the 1938 German Nazi pogrom attacking Jews with violent atrocities. (My own forebears got out months earlier.)

The word came to mind while reading a January 19 AP report which begins, “Israeli settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village in the West Bank, setting fire to a series of structures . . . in an overnight onslaught that has become a common phenomenon in the occupied territory.” Accompanied by “the sound of gunfire, screaming and barking.” Homes and cars were burned.

Israel’s military said soldiers were searching the area to make arrests — but none were reported.

Such vicious unprovoked assaults upon ordinary Palestinians have indeed been constant. Perpetrated by racist religious settler fanatics believing God wants them to reprise the Old Testament’s conquest of Canaan slaughtering its original inhabitants. Israel’s regime, captive to these extremists, hardly pretends to restrain them. Only going through the motions, as in this latest episode at Khirbet al-Sidra, reported above. Practically no settlers are ever punished for such crimes.

They apparently see an open door for them, while the world’s eyes are on the far greater ones in Gaza, with over 70,000 killed and most housing there destroyed, the population reduced to starvation and wretchedness. While Israel works to impede humanitarian help. Warring against the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, whose headquarters have now been bulldozed, Israelis whooping in jubilation on the rubble.

At least the Gaza monstrosity had the pretext of October 7 and continuing Hamas enmity. There’s not even any such pretext for West Bank settler savagery.

“Never again” was the line after the Holocaust. But these Israelis are themselves taking a page from the Nazi playbook.

And then there’s Minnesota, likewise with ethnic “others” singled out for brutalization. Today brings an AP report about U.S. citizen ChongLy Thao, of St. Paul (whose family had escaped from Communist Laos in the 1970’s). His home was attacked by a brace of masked ICE agents, with no warrant, breaking down his door, pointing guns at his family and screaming at them. Thao tried to get his ID, but the ICE men said they didn’t want to see it.

Instead, they handcuffed him, in his underwear, took him outdoors in frigid weather, drove him away, then exposed him outside again — and demanded his ID.

Later they drove him him back, viewed his ID, and left with no apology.

Broadcast video of other ICE operations shows shockingly cruel brutality. Its gauleiter Gregory Bovino insists everything they’re doing is lawful, proper, even “moral.” Kristi Noem’s DHS justified the Thao attack as having sought some sex offenders — one of whose first name supposedly matched that of the owner of a car borrowed by Thao’s son. AP’s report finds nothing connecting any sex offenders to the Thaos. So the regime just makes stuff up — as usual.

Why aren’t all these ICE pricks’ violent crimes prosecuted by local law enforcement and grand juries? Certainly Renee Good’s murder should be. The regime says it won’t allow Minnesota authorities to impinge upon its own investigation of that case — an investigation which the regime meantime deems unnecessary. They also say all these federal officers are immune from prosecution. Utter bunk. This is still a nation of laws where all government personnel (though not, apparently, the president) are accountable to the public and not free to commit crimes with impunity.

Or is it?

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Disgusting, Vile, Sick

January 17, 2026

Venezuela’s democracy heroine Machado gifted her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump (well, the medal — not the money). Part of the global orgy of Trump butt-kissing. I want to throw up.

Any decent person would have told her, lovely gesture, but I can’t take it from you. Not infantile Trump, who wouldn’t pass the marshmallow test. He preened as if he were truly getting the award. Machado showed she’s far smarter than him. He doesn’t know the world sees all this as a laughable farce. Like that ridiculous football “peace prize” cooked up for him. All this degrades America.

Machado was angling for Trump’s support, as Venezuela’s rightful president; her movement overwhelmingly won the last election, that Maduro stole. Trump instead backs Maduro’s illegitimate flunky. Because he simply likes anti-democratic dictators.

Meantime he’s ratcheting up his demand that America must get Greenland. Saying that otherwise Russia or China will. A lie idiotic even for Trump. In fact Greenland has NATO protection, so if attacked by Russia or China, we’d be obligated to defend it! And if the U.S. is the attacker, other NATO nations would be obligated to defend Greenland. Some are now sending forces there.

Trump deems Greenland vital to U.S. security. But we already have an excellent security agreement with them. Rare minerals? As if Greenland wouldn’t simply sell them to us. While attacking it would hugely damage our security — by blowing up the NATO alliance and even our existing security pact with Greenland itself. Making us an outlaw pariah nation, globally despised. Great for our national security, huh?

One place America is already massively invading with armed force is Minneapolis. TV news video of ICE’s attacks there shows shockingly extreme brutality. Now going house-to-house, busting down doors, seizing anyone they choose. Demanding people prove citizenship. (Can you?) Protesters, and even bystanders, are brutalized too. I saw one woman, just trying to get to a medical appointment, dragged out of her car and detained after ICE men smashed her window. She’s lucky she wasn’t shot like Renee Good.

The regime insists it’s going after lawbreakers. While ICE’s indiscriminate mass recruitment has clearly attracted violence-prone young men. They, and their higher-ups, are the real criminals. Now the Department of “Justice” is moving to indict the governor and mayor for opposing them.

America’s regime is disgusting, vile, deeply sick.

In fact making the nation literally sick. With HHS led by an anti-science crackpot, now responsible for messing up federal health guidelines. Vaccines a particular target; doctors are reporting an explosion of vaccine refusal. Causing outbreaks of diseases like measles; children have already died. Many more will.

We’re only a quarter through Trump’s term.

It will get worse.

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Book Spurning

January 14, 2026

Socrates denounced writing as undermining people’s faculty for memory. Nevertheless, writing and reading spread greatly in the ensuing 2400 years. Now that’s gone into reverse.

Decades ago some feared TV rotting our brains. But today people are ensorcelled by blizzards of distractions oriented to the visual, and with instant gratification. Acculturated to a pace so quickened that if a stimulus does not pack an immediate punch, people swiftly move on.

That applies to prose. A word few nowadays might know. A recent piece in The Economist begins by noting a test wherein the opening of the Dickens novel Bleak House confuzzled many readers, unable to make sense of the words. And those were University English literature students! “Barely even literate,” snarks the article.

In the wider population it’s worse yet, with ever fewer reading books (or much else). The newspaper landscape too is contracting. Indeed, so is prose itself: The Economist did an analysis, finding declining word counts in published sentences generally.

I strive for concision in my own writing. However, we’re seeing shorter sentences not because writers are improving but because readers are less receptive to longer ones, which they’re less able to grasp.

Not so long ago, few could read at all. Then came a more educated era, where masses embraced reading as a route to self-improvement and advancement, boosting one’s ability to engage intelligently with the wider world. Hence the broad “middlebrow” Book-of-the-Month Club phenomenon. That light is flickering out. The Economist cites surveys showing younger people in particular call reading “a chore” or “boring.” So schools assign less of it. Making for a doom-loop.

Also another propellant for inequality. Today’s reading decline most strongly harms those already suffering socio-economic disadvantage, widening the gap between them and the affluent (who read more).

The Economist says reading is one of life’s great pleasures. I love seeing how other writers do what they do. But more importantly, it’s been central in my lifelong project of trying to understand people and the world. Something that others today — an era of “smart” phones, social media, and TikTok — could use more than ever.

Instead we see a great dumbing-down. We once thought the “information age” would make us more informed. Ha-ha. And it’s not just a matter of factual knowledge, understanding true reality. The Economist says declining ability to read complex prose leads to diminished general ability to handle complex ideas; decreased literary sophistication lessens political sophistication. People becoming, politically, unguided missiles.

And the public square is increasingly polluted with lies and fake news, metastasized by Artificial Intelligence. My own first line of defense against falsehood is my understanding of how reality works, honed by a life of reading. So when Trump says other countries empty jails and nut-houses to send those inmates to us, I don’t have to think twice whether it might be true. It just flies in the face of how I know the world works. But ever fewer people have such understanding.

One might counter that it isn’t people getting less information, it’s just different information, in a different format. Well, sorry: funny little TikTok videos people addictively scroll ain’t “information” (in the word’s common sense). Many say they get their news from TikTok. That’s not equivalent to The New York Times. And only 38% of Americans surveyed say they pay attention to news at all (and many of those are probably lying).

Walter Lippmann, in his 1922 book Public Opinion, noted that journalists chronicle facts and events — but that’s not the same as truth. Grasping truth requires more effort. Mere facts — not to mention “alternative facts” — can become highly misleading without proper context. And it’s context that reading broadly provides.

Here again Artificial Intelligence doesn’t help. Students increasingly use it in their education, to answer questions and do work for them. Studies already show that this blunts one’s critical thinking faculty. Artificial Intelligence diminishes the real kind.

Something else looming: online porn has long been a big distraction, but AI has only just started metastasizing this, making it far more enticing. Also reducing readership for the likes of Bleak House.

America is going off the rails, our civic culture collapsing. Becoming the Idiocracy of the 2006 comedy film. I don’t expect everyone to read Bleak House. But when people aren’t reading much of anything, maybe it’s not so surprising they’d elect a lunatic who tried to overthrow the government, and deploys masked goons seizing folks off the streets. I can’t imagine those past book club devotees voting like that.

And this is not just an American syndrome; the same factors are making voter behavior irresponsible in countries like Britain, Germany, France, etc.

Culture wars debate what people are allowed to read. A greater concern should be how little they read. Why ban or burn books when they’re not read anyway?

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1984

January 11, 2026

Yes, the book, Orwell’s 1949 novel. I read it, like, 60 years ago. But one of my book groups recently picked it — for obvious reasons. So I read it again. Unfun.

Set in a then-future London, this is a classic dystopia. Ruled by an oppressive, all-controlling “party,” led by “Big Brother” (probably not an actual person) who, on omnipresent posters, “is watching you.” Through telescreens everywhere. (Would require, like, half the party to do all that watching, but those viewers are never mentioned.)

This was somewhat modeled on Stalin’s USSR, written before its horribleness was much known to the outside world. A pervasive feature is people made “unpersons” — “vaporized.” In vast numbers, mostly for “thoughtcrime” (or any vague hint of it). Yet meantime 85% of the population are “proletarians” (“proles”) living a hardscrabble existence and actually largely ignored by the regime.

From the earliest pages I was struck by just how extreme Orwell’s picture is. No subtlety or notionally redeeming glimmers, but dark in every detail. The food bad tasting; the liquor vile; every utensil “greasy.” Even the air itself nasty in this 1984 London. It all felt overdone. And it only got more and more extreme.

The protagonist, Winston Smith, ironically combines a quintessential Everyman last name with that of a heroic icon. Winston, 39, lacks memory of a pre-“Big Brother” time. To this reader he seemed something of a cipher, a character without character. Like the soulless guy in Camus’s The Stranger.

The book is a meditation on the human condition. The world of party creatures Winston inhabits is thoroughly inhuman. Which he comes to see when he hooks up with lover Julia, a prohibited relationship; realizing that only the wretched proles retain their humanity. The book shows us how alone we all truly are —however much involved with others, ultimately imprisoned within our own skulls. And the one line that stuck with me, from my long-ago reading, was Winston’s, under torture: “Do it to Julia.”

Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, which of course is a ministry of lies. His job involves revising past documents in conformance with the regime’s current story. That is, altering the past, particularly erasing any record of unpersons. (Stalin famously had Trotsky and other fallen people scrubbed from old photos.)

This is a huge undertaking, with Smith a small cog. But I wondered why the effort was even deemed needed. It didn’t seem people in this society would have much access, anyway, to that past documentation, so why bother altering it? Just feed people the crap you want them to swallow now. (There’s war, against Eastasia. Until suddenly it’s against Eurasia. Why would the party see fit to make that change? But never mind; the point is that everyone adjusts their brains to the altered “reality.” Proving the party’s power over it.)

This resonates for today’s America. Most notably our regime’s huge effort to revise the history of what occurred on January 6, 2021. Brazen nineteen-eighty-fourization. Showing that not even here is there any need to, as in Orwell’s dystopia, go back and falsify the original news reports of that day. Or the damning congressional inquiry report.* The regime simply spews out its very different story, and its cultists believe it. Lincoln did say, “you can fool some of the people all of the time.”

Now the Renee Good killing. Video shows an ICE agent’s obviously unjustified shooting. “Self defense” says the regime. That’s “garbage” as the Minneapolis mayor says. Yet all MAGA world buys it. Seeing is believing, but for many people what they believe dictates what they see.

Back to 1984: one could fathom the party’s vaporizing the insufficiently loyal. Yet the extent of this is, again, extreme; swallowing almost everyone eventually. And with such cruel brutality that Orwell’s account here again seems over-the-top. Winston’s interrogation, with torture, goes on for months and pages and pages. What is the point — if all such victims will be shot in the end anyway? But that very question is the point; Winston himself asks it. The answer he gets from his high-placed torturer makes no sense from any rational standpoint. It’s totally insane. While Winston is told the purpose is to cure his notional insanity.

A critique of the novel is the inclusion of many pages from a book Winston obtains, by Goldstein, the anti-party rebel. Analyzing the society and party. I found this tedious and unnecessary; actually detracting from the unnerving mysteriousness of it all. But I did note Goldstein’s characterizing the party man as “a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph . . . the mentality appropriate to a state of war.” A fair description of the MAGA mindset plaguing America.

Doubleplusungood.

* The commemorative plaques honoring the January 6 police heroes have been disappeared from the House of Representatives.

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Venezuela’s Oil — And The New World Order

January 9, 2026

“No blood for oil!” was the cry opposing our 2003 Iraq action. The cynical notion that it was to grab Iraq’s oil was false. We went in for high-minded reasons. Which we failed at. But never took a drop of oil.

Our seizing Venezuela’s president is decried as violating international law. But Maduro was not a legitimate president, he’d stolen an election. The drug charges against him may be rubbish, I don’t know; he should rather be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Many deaths on his head. The international machinery for such cases is moribund, but the U.S. putting him on trial a-la-Nuremberg would be right and moral.

That would characterize our Venezuela action more broadly if (as we aimed to do in Iraq) we were replacing a whole vicious regime with a democratic one. Led by Edmundo Gonzales, rightful winner of the 2024 election, and ally of Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado. Instead, Trump has callously sidelined them in favor of a deal keeping Venezuela’s rotten regime in power, as America’s tools.

After some flailing, he is now clear that it’s all about oil. Certainly not restoring democracy. The drug stuff was always dubious too — Venezuela is involved with cocaine, not fentanyl, which is our real problem. Nor is this is some do-gooder mission to aid the country’s oil infrastructure. Trump unashamedly says it’s for America to get oil to sell, keeping the money. (Something we never dreamed of pulling off in Iraq.)

The deal does give us some of Venezuela’s oil. A mafia-style protection racket — they pay us to let them stay in power and brutalize their population.

But in fact even oil is just a pretext rather than the true reason. Which is macho swagger. To show who’s boss in this hemisphere. Display our muscle. That’s the “Donroe Doctrine” Trump has brayed about.

This broader ethos was shockingly enunciated the other day by top Trump henchman Stephen Miller in a CNN interview: “We live . . . in the real world . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world . . . We are a superpower and will conduct ourselves” as one.

And so we now threaten Colombia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba — and Greenland. Trump and Rubio have stated it would be nice to get Greenland peaceably, but otherwise, we’ll be entirely justified in seizing it by force, because we can.

Greenland is strategically important. That’s why we already have a military base there — pursuant to a longstanding joint security agreement with our NATO ally Denmark (of which Greenland is a territory). Trump’s belligerent threats are wrecking that mutual relationship and thus actually undermining our security interests regarding Greenland. The rest of Europe is openly aghast too. For one NATO member to attack the territory of another would blow up the alliance, long a pillar of America’s global security. This is insane.

More than any other country, America was admired and looked to as a moral leader. Today, not so much. Trump and Miller are proclaiming we’re just another bully, and a might-makes-right world is not only what exists, but what should exist. A world where the powerful can do as they please. Not exactly a recipe for a world of peace and human progress. Not the kind of world we should want to live in. And, actually, not serving our true national interests.

For most of a century, we were the leaders in trying to coax the world toward a better paradigm. Now we instead declare we like it when bullies rule, and relish being one ourselves.

Further, Trump now says the only constraint on his foreign policy is his own morality. He has none. He too is guilty of crimes against humanity, literally with countless deaths on his head. He too belongs before a Nuremberg tribunal.

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My Blog Suspension

January 8, 2026

Visitors here in recent days have gotten a screen saying this blog is suspended for violating terms of service.

I learned of it yesterday when I tried to post a new piece and hit a nasty red box. I do write some feisty stuff, but always try to be responsible. My wife suspected I’d finally been busted by the regime. I expressed confidence that we still (largely) have freedom of speech, and that whatever had happened, it would be fixed in a rational system.

I tried to contact WordPress, the host. Then an email arrived, saying I’d been warned several times — I hadn’t received those messages — but now explaining the suspension, and inviting my response.

It concerned not anything I’d written, but comments! In 2017 I’d posted “Why So Many Blacks in Ads?” A serious question which I tried to discuss seriously. This proved to be my most visited blog post ever — attracting the most comments — by far. Continuing thus over the years.

Mostly hair-raisingly racist comments. Believing in free speech, I have refrained from censoring them; and here I wanted to leave those comments up, so people can see just what extremes of vicious racism are out there. I’ve even sometimes pointed to them.

WordPress, however, said I had violated terms of service by not deleting those comments. I replied that I would abide by their requirements. They answered that the suspension is lifted, and specifying some mysterious browser rigmarole I needed to do, in addition to deleting the comments. I replied that I was able to do the rigmarole (I think) but found the blog actually still suspended, blocking my comment deletion. (In the exchange, I believe I was interacting with an AI.)

Then, lo, this morning my e-mail included a routine notice of a new comment (on “Why So Many Blacks” of course). How did that happen? Seems the blog was now indeed unsuspended. So I went in, to delete all the ugly comments. I thought I did it, yet it seems most are still there. Will follow up.

Meantime, oddly enough, I’d been planning to post, as a joke, a fake notice of blog suspension, calling me “Freaky Franky” and a “lunatic leftist scumbag,” ordered by the President with Trump’s signature. I think I won’t do that now.

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Venezuelan Regime Change — Or a Sick Joke?

January 4, 2026

The words “regime change” got a bad rap from Iraq. Actually, few Americans understood the evil of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and the desirability of changing it. But we botched that. Casting a shadow over talk of “regime change” for Iran — desirable though that too would be. And now, Venezuela. Another evil regime.

The George W. Bush administration screwed up Iraq by failing to think through and plan sufficiently for the day after. But they were godlike geniuses compared to Trump’s Keystone Kops.

Venezuelan President Maduro will be put on trial, in a U.S. court, for drug trafficking. Right after Trump pardoned former Honduran President Hernandez, convicted in a U.S. court for drug trafficking.

In Venezuela’s July presidential election, Maduro’s opposition united strongly behind Maria Corina Machado, a highly popular and respected figure. The regime barred her from the ballot. The opposition managed to field a substitute candidate, Edmundo Gonzales, who crushingly defeated Maduro by more than two-to-one — proven by a massive operation to document the vote.

The regime nevertheless brazenly declared Maduro re-elected, with brutal repression against anyone dissenting. Gonzalez left the country; Machado kept up her heroic opposition while in hiding. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, she managed a dangerous escape to Norway.

A “proper, judicious” Venezuelan regime change should obviously be led by Machado (or Gonzalez). But Trump, in his Saturday press event, mentioned neither name. When asked about Machado, he said she’s not popular or respected. My head exploded.

It seems we’re now instead recognizing Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as his successor. After calling Maduro totally illegitimate — how is she somehow not? Trump claims she’s promised to work with American overlords. But in her own subsequent TV address, Rodriguez defiantly declared that Venezuela has only one president — Maduro.

Yet Trump says America will be running Venezuela for now, to make it a paradise of freedom. (Having mockingly denounced “nation building” in his campaign.) In the case of Iraq, we did run the country (albeit shambolically) — with a zillion troops on the ground. In Venezuela right now we have approximately zero troops. Even the U.S. Embassy there has been shut for years. While Venezuela’s own military looks set on keeping control.

A military which Trump also bizarrely said has a lot of good guys, who could lead. Just what the country needs — a military ruler, cut from the cloth of the Maduro gangster regime. My head exploded again. Of course, Trump does like military strongmen and dictatorships. (And hates Nobel laureates who are not him.)

This is not regime change, it’s regime continuation. The real result of our Venezuela operation is to actually make us now complicit partners with this disgusting gangster regime.

The country most needing regime change is America.

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Posted in Politics, stinking piece of shit, World affairs | 4 Comments »

Venezuela

January 3, 2026

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

So with Trump’s Venezuela action. Doing the right thing — even if for bad reasons.

In 2014 I suggested a “Soldiers Without Borders” organization, to act against unjust situations in the world, that global bodies (or individual nations, mainly the U.S.), for various reasons, are just unable to tackle.

Partly inspired by a 1960s British TV series, “The Avengers,” whose title conveys the idea. Though that was small-time. So many big bad guys in the world cry out for comeuppance. Min Aung Hlain, Dagalo, Diaz Canel, Mnangagwa, Ortega, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Sisi, Putin.

And Maduro. Ruling Venezuela like Al Capone and his criminal gang ruled Chicago. Some mooned about Venezuela’s military ousting him; but that military was hand-in-glove with him. He and they together looting the country for their own self-aggrandizement, while immiserating the population with repression and insane policies that destroyed the economy, sending millions fleeing as refugees. Maduro was overwhelmingly voted out in 2025 elections, but his regime just declared false contrary results — and jailed and tortured anyone objecting.

America going in with force and seizing him is an all-too-rare fantasy fulfillment for me.

But . . .

This is Trump. All bullshit, remember. Proven, over and over, incapable of any true rightness. Any ostensible rightness necessarily being a corrupt sham. The whole Venezuela drug thing always largely phony nonsense. Trump’s tale of Venezuela “terrorizing” America simply ridiculous. Acting for democracy would be worthy, but that sure isn’t Trump. So what, truly, is the aim? And the obvious big question is: what now?

Trump’s speech today was typically full of bragging, macho preening, with his deranged “weave” of irrelevant boastful digressions. But he did say “we’re going to run the country,” until there’s a “safe, proper, judicious transition.” To what, exactly? Achieved how? (Like we did in Iraq?)

As if we’ll just walk in, set up authorities, govern Venezuela. As if there’s no force there, no Venezuelan military, to give us trouble; they’ll just meekly melt away. Trump notably had nothing to say about Maria Corina Machado, recently awarded the Nobel prize for her courageous opposition to Maduro. (He’s full of Nobel envy.)

He did instead say he expects we can work with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who’s been sworn in to succeed him. What?? A “safe, proper, judicious transition?” Rodriguez has already gone on Venezuelan TV denouncing America.

This is just nuts.

Our Maduro action is already incurring widespread condemnation as illegitimate and lawless, the doing of a global bully. A throwback to past U.S. colonialistically throwing its weight around in this hemisphere. All that opprobrium would be an acceptable price for America to pay, for the boon of making Venezuela better. But if — as seems likely — Trump fails to follow through intelligently and perspicaciously, and winds up leaving Venezuela as bad off as ever, then it will all be for nothing.

UPDATE 3:40 PM: Seems Venezuela’s military is digging in for war. And asked at his news conference, Trump said he had not spoken to Machado, and seemed to rule out her leading Venezuela, saying she lacks the support or respect within the country. WTF?? Typical Trump clueless idiocy. If this actually reflects the mindset about America running Venezuela, it does not bode well. After all, Trump has been running America — into the ground.

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