Let’s say you are an American president, and you decide that with all the oil being produced in your own country – the U.S. is the world’s top oil producer, pumping more than 13 million barrels a day – that is not enough. You want more oil. You want oil from Iraq. You want oil from Syria. Those places are far, far away, in the Middle East.

And then you look south, in your own hemisphere, and you see Venezuela, and you think, I’d like some oil from there. We used to have American oil companies in that South American country. Then in 1976 – 50 years ago – Venezuela nationalized its oil industry and took over the oil fields and infrastructure built by American oil companies.

You are an American president whose favorite word, next to “billions,” is “unfair.” You think to yourself, how unfair it was to take all that oil away from U.S. oil companies. You don’t like the president who’s running Venezuela, this Maduro guy, because he doesn’t show you the respect you think you are due as the King of All That You See. So, you decide you’ll get rid of the disrespectful dictator of Venezuela, and you will take the oil.

You see yourself as much, much smarter than the bumbling George W. Bush, whose major error, when he invaded Iraq to get rid of its disrespectful dictator, Saddam Hussein, did not take the oil. You ignore the fact that the Bush family – Junior and Senior both – were in the oil business in Texas, so they at least knew something of what was involved in taking the oil, whether it was out of the ground in the U.S. or out of a foreign country such as Iraq.

You think you are smarter than George W. Bush because you know a lot of oil men. They supported your campaign in 2024. They have come to visit you at your resort/hotel/home in Palm Beach, Mar a Lago, and they have come to visit you in the White House. Some of those oil men run the companies whose oil was stolen from them back in 1976. They want their oil back, and you told them that you would get it for them, probably for a royalty (wonderful word, that one) to be paid to you personally through whatever your latest crypto scam is.

So, you call up your spray-tanned and tattooed Secretary of War, and you tell him, go get that fuckstick Maduro in Venezuela and put him in jail in New York City and take their oil.

There is always a problem. This is a rare one that isn’t caused by Democrats, or at least you haven’t figured out a way to blame it on Democrats yet. What do you do after you depose a South American dictator? Bush famously didn’t have a plan after he got rid of Saddam. It became his nickname: George W. “didn’t have a plan” Bush.

You don’t have a plan, either. What you have is a gaggle of yes-men, just like Bush had, who tell you not to worry, that you are King of All You See, so taking the oil won’t be a problem. You have the greatest military in the history of the world. Hell, your greatest military has been killing drug smugglers in boats for months now – the count is more than 100 – and it took your greatest military only two hours to spirit Maduro out of his fortified compound and put him on the USS Iwo Jima to send him on his way to New York City, where the national media is waiting to report on everything that happens to him in court, so they won’t be reporting on the 5.2 million new Jeffrey Epstein files. Or at least they won’t be reporting on the files as much.

What could go wrong down there in Venezuela? Your Chief Adviser on Everything in the World, Stephen Miller, tells you that power is the only thing you need to get whatever you want. The world will cower in the shadow of your power, says Stephen Miller. He even went on TV on Sunday and explained to Jake Tapper how you did what you did in Venezuela:

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So, for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country.”

See, that’s all it takes. You pick up the phone, you go on Truth Social, you say some stuff in ALL CAPS, and the world bends to your will.

Except for those pesky people who live in the countries from which you want to take the oil, and some of the pesky people who don’t even live in those countries.

Look at what happened in Iraq when Bush took over the country from Saddam Hussein. He hired some big U.S. companies such as KBR and Halliburton and Bechtel to go to Iraq and rebuild the country’s “infrastructure.” The Congress passed a $70 billion supplemental funding bill in November of 2003 to pay for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq’s infrastructure. I was in Iraq when that bill was passed. A West Point classmate of mine was in charge of USAID in Baghdad. All the infrastructure money was to go through USAID to help rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure so the big U.S. companies could get the oil fields pumping and the oil pipelines running. My friend, the USAID guy, told me all of the rebuilding money was going to the oil infrastructure. Not for sanitation and roads and rail systems and the electrical grid, except as those systems served the Iraqi oil business.

This was not reported in the press. One of the big U.S. companies, the Bechtel Corporation, issued a press release announcing its contract with USAID to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure. The press release was a lie. For one thing, Bechtel was hired with rebuilding oil infrastructure in northern Iraq, but the Americans working for the company got shot at and mortared and attacked by insurgents so much, they pulled out.

Attacks in northern Iraq on pipelines that carried oil from the Kurdish region around Kirkuk to a pipeline that ran north towards Turkey and south towards Baiji and Baghdad took place nightly. The 101^st Airborne Division, one brigade of which was stationed near Al-Qayyarah, was tasked with defending the pipeline that ran near the Tigris River. Well, they didn’t have enough soldiers to defend more than 100 miles of pipeline. Insurgents would watch where the U.S. soldiers went on their defensive patrols, then they would go to where the soldiers weren’t, and they would blow up a section of the pipeline, which ran aboveground, and was vulnerable to attacks with as simple a weapon as an IED made from a 155 mm Howitzer round, of which there were thousands in Iraq.

The Bechtel guys weren’t working on the infrastructure; the U.S. Army couldn’t defend the oil pipeline from Kirkuk, or the pipeline that ran north and south along the Tigris. So, what was happening? A comparatively small number of Iraqi insurgents were stymying American efforts to “take the oil.”

It’s still happening. Last summer, insurgents supported by Iran used drones to attack oilfields and pipelines run by Americans in the Kurdish region of Iraq. They hit an oil field run by HKN Energy, a company owned by the son of Texas billionaire Ross Perot, a big financial supporter of Donald Trump. According to Reuters, the Iran-backed insurgents also hit an Iraqi oil field run by another Texas oil company, Hunt Oil.

These are all friends of Donald Trump. According to Reuters, the attacks halted half of the Kurdistan region’s oil production. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio got very mad. He told Iraq’s leaders in Baghdad that Trump would impose sanctions on Iraq’s oil business if they did not reopen the oil pipeline to Turkey that led to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. Facing sanctions, Iraq and Turkey got together and reopened the pipeline, tilting Iraq away from its relationship with Iran and towards the U.S., according to Reuters.

All because some oil fields and an oil pipeline were attacked by Iran-backed insurgents.

In 2003, the attacks on the same pipeline were carried out by Iraqis on foot carrying IED’s in canvas sacks. Now those attacks can be carried out remotely by a guy sitting in a building somewhere looking at a little screen holding what amounts to a video game controller in his hands.

There are a zillion factions in Iraq today. There were a zillion factions in Iraq in 2003. There were vulnerable pipelines then, there are vulnerable pipelines now. The lesson here is that this shit never stops. There is always someone who doesn’t want American companies to “take the oil.”

What do you think is going to happen in Venezuela with its oil fields and oil pipelines when Trump sends American companies down there to “take the oil?” There are drug gangs like Tren de Aragua and Cartel de las Soles who are running cocaine through the areas where pipelines are. There is the ELN, the National Liberation Army of Colombia, which has strong units and allies in Venezuela. The FARC guerilla group from Colombia still has factions operating in Venezuela. There are so-called Colectivos, pro-government militias which control neighborhoods of Caracas and areas of Venezuela and frequently do battle with countervailing gangs and militias from the other side of the political spectrum.

There are pro-government militias and anti-government militias in Venezuela just like there were in Iraq. When we invaded, the sectarian struggle between the Shiites and Sunnis did not suddenly come to a stop just because George W. Bush got a hair up his ass and sent American soldiers there. When the Iraqi army was disbanded, factions formed their own militias. Some of them funded their operations by hacking into pipelines, stealing oil and selling it on the black market.

Gee, do you think that a country such as Venezuela, with a major system of cocaine production and smuggling, might also have a system of stealing oil and selling it on the black market? Bloomberg Business says it’s already happening. Do you think that there might be people in Venezuela who liked Maduro, and voted for him, who are unhappy that he was kidnapped? Do you think they might have an opinion about what happens to the oil in Venezuela that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller think is their right to take as Big Powerful People? Do you think that there might be some groups who plan to attack the complex system of oil pipelines that run through Venezuela to stop the U.S. from taking the oil?

This is how stupid Trump and Miller and Rubio are. They announced what they want to do with Venezuela’s oil. Trump used the word “oil” twenty times in his press conference about the attack on Venezuela at Mar a Lago on Sunday. Trump said Venezuela owes us oil, because they took it from us, so we’re going to take it back. I’m pretty sure they can get CNN International in Venezuela. They know we’re coming.

At least Bush and Cheney had the sense to tell a big fat lie that they weren’t in Iraq to take the oil, even though they were there for exactly that and used USAID to funnel borrowed money that wasn’t even appropriated from taxpayer funds in the U.S. Treasury to fund their attempt to rebuild and take over Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

We are still paying interest on those borrowed billions. How long will we be paying interest on the money Trump and Miller and Rubio spend to “take the oil” from Venezuela they think American oil companies are owed?

Because we know one thing for sure from the incredibly ill-advised adventure in Iraq that left us in debt for about two trillion dollars: Whatever we get up to in Venezuela won’t pay for itself. Trump thinks that “running the country” of Venezuela, to use Stephen Miller’s arrogant assertion, will make the U.S. and Trump rich. What neither of them understand is that when you exercise power using the U.S. military, it doesn’t make money. It costs money. Lots and lots of money, and usually American lives as well.

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Trump has been in office for less than a year. The Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade less than three years ago. And today, if you are a woman in the United States, your rights change when you cross state lines — men’s rights do not.

It’s easy to lose sight of just how debilitating this administration has been for reproductive rights, because they are doing so much else so loudly (apologies to Greenland). But this administration has quietly attacked abortion rights from just about every angle. A new report from the Center for Reproductive Rights makes clear just how aggressive they’ve been. A few highlights:

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• The Trump administration has effectively told emergency rooms and hospitals that they do not have to save pregnant women’s lives or preserve their health. Under a long-standing federal law, emergency rooms have to stabilize patients regardless of whether or not those patients can pay; if the hospital cannot provide the care the patient needs, they are required to stabilize them and then transfer them somewhere that can. For pregnant patients, this means that hospitals and ERs may sometimes have to provide abortion care: If a pregnant woman is in a health- or life-threatening emergency, in some cases, the only way to stabilize her is to end the pregnancy. But “pro-life” groups don’t like this law; they prefer to let women lose their uteruses, or hemorrhage, or wind up on a ventilator, or nearly die of sepsis or other infection — they claim that abortion is never medically necessary, and threaten to prosecute any doctor who deems it so. The result is that some women are dying; many more are nearly dying, particular women in the midst of miscarriages. In Texas, rates of sepsis infection among miscarrying women increased by more than 50% after their abortion ban — doctors are waiting until pregnant women have serious potentially deadly infections before giving them the care they need. And they’re doing this because new Trump administration rules do not require them to treat pregnant patients like all other people; pregnant women are a legal sub-category of person, not entitled the same requirement of care as everyone else.

• The Trump administration has launched a politically-motivated safety review of mifepristone, “the abortion pill,” seeking to challenge its approval by the FDA. Mifepristone is overwhelmingly safe, and has been used all over the world for decades now — for safe abortions, but also for a variety of other indications. The drug’s safety record is excellent, and the only reason to have the FDA review its approval is because it’s used for abortion — not because there are any real safety concerns. If the review results in a change to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, it would leave millions of women without access to a safe abortion option.

• The Trump administration destroyed millions of dollars of contraceptives bound for women in Africa, because anti-abortion extremists claim that modern birth control is “abortifacient.” Millions of US dollars were basically set on fire so that some of the world’s poorest women wouldn’t be able to plan their pregnancies. The result? A projected 1.5 million unplanned pregnancies. And that is in addition to the millions of people, including children, who lost basics like HIV treatment, contraception, prenatal care, and infant care with the demise of USAID. Today, starving women are birthing premature babies, and the US has barely saved a cent (the “pro-life” movement is also nowhere to be found when it comes to saving the lives of these babies).

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The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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Oh helllll fucking no! President Donald "I rape little girls” Trump thinks he’s going to use billions of American taxpayer dollars to fund his little South American road trip? Eat shit, piggy.

If you’re not sure what I’m referring to, let me catch you up on current events. Obviously, you know we invaded Venezuela and kidnapped their president, Nicolas Maduro, and, inexplicably, his wife, Cilia Flores. You should also know by now that all of the reasons the regime gave for targeting Venezuela up until the last couple of weeks were a lie. Fentanyl. Cocaine. The newly invented and completely fictional “narcoterrorism.” Spreading freedom and democracy. Bullshit. All of it.

Then Trump just decided to stop lying and told everyone it was about the oil. Trump wanted the oil. He really REALLY wanted the oil. He said it over and over and over again. That was OUR oil. Venezuela stole it from us and we wanted it back!

It was the whitest, most colonizer shit I have ever heard in my life. I don’t even think in terms of “colonizer,” and that’s all I could hear when Trump opened his creepy little anus mouth. That’s how blatant it was. I just watched all three Avatar movies in the last two weeks,1 and the invading bad guys from Earth are quite literally colonizers looking to steal the native resources and even THEY weren’t that much of a fucking caricature.

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Now, I don’t mean Trump is going to have us pay for the invasion itself. We’re already paying for the military’s almost trillion-dollar budget. Yaaaaay military-industrial complex. What I mean is that Trump thinks we’re going to foot the bill for the fucking disaster that’s already unfolding because he’s a fucking moron and so is everyone else in his regime of morons.

This is from NBC:

Moreover, he said, the U.S. may subsidize an effort by oil companies to rebuild the country’s energy infrastructure — a project he said could take less than 18 months.

“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” he said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”

Less than 18 months? The fuck it will. But Pedobrain is right that it will cost a lot of money. Conservative estimates suggest it will cost over $50 billion and take years just to maintain the decrepit systems already in place. To rebuild, much less expand, would take over a decade and cost over $180 billion.

The reason Trump is “offering” OUR fucking money to pay for it is because there is not one single oil company interested in doing business in Venezuela.

“But Uncle Ogre!,” you say, “Weren’t the oil companies behind this war in the first place?! Didn’t they push Trump to invade so they could steal the oil and make money?”

That seems like a really obvious conclusion, right? What kind of fucking moron invades a country to steal its oil only to discover no oil companies WANT the oil?

Allow me to reintroduce you to Donald “I stare directly into solar eclipses” Trump, the dumbest motherfucking pedophile to ever sit in the Oval Office.2

Yeah, this fucking genius, the greatest businessman in allll of American history I tells ya!, has been planning this invasion for months and overlooked a few crucial details. Such as:

1. What happens the next day. Like THE VERY NEXT FUCKING DAY! Who knows? We didn’t bother to plan that far ahead. Too boring. We’ll just fucking wing it!

2. Which bootlicking Trump lackey would run point on the whole thing after declaring ourselves conquering heroes? WE STILL DO NOT FUCKING KNOW WHO IS MAKING THE DECISIONS HERE AT HOME!

3. If the goal was to secure the oil, how would that be done? Would we just pump it onto American tankers? Would we just take over their oil industry? Would we hand it over to a friendly oil company and take a piece of the profits? NO ONE FUCKING KNOWS BECAUSE NO ONE THOUGHT TO ASK!

It seems like we were planning to have an American oil company move in and run the whole thing for us. ‘Murika! But after, Jesus Fucking Christ AFTER!!!!, we invaded, that’s when Trump and the imbeciles working for him/pulling his puppet strings looked around and realized no one wanted to touch Venezuela with a ten-foot pole.

And I get it. And so will you.

$50 billion just to keep the lights on is a lot of money. Venezuela is only producing about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day. Even getting it up to 2 million, it will take years to recoup a $50 billion investment. Let’s say someone drops the $180 billion to really get that oil flowing. It’s still going to take well over a decade to see a profit. Possibly twenty years.

Now, oil companies have the money and the patience. Buuuuut why the fuck would they EVER risk dropping that kind of money in a country where the oil industry was nationalized? Trump will be dead or in prison or living in exile within the next five years. The next Democratic president in 2029 is not going to go to war for oil in fucking Venezuela and every oil CEO knows it.

That’s why they all said “No.”

But if the United States government is paying for it? Well…that might be worth it. After all, if the whole thing falls apart, my oil company didn’t lose anything but some time and manhours and some equipment that’s already paid for. And the reward is access to a massive oil field.

Sure, the price of oil is kind of low right now and opening up a new giant market would be bad for business, but imagine being able to tell OPEC to fuck itself whenever I, the CEO of whichever oil company controls Venezuela, want? Kind of tempting…

But that means you and I, the American taxpayer, would be footing the bill while the oil company CEO gets all the profits. We already subsidize these greedy fucks to the tune of around $35 billion a year in the US. Fuck them and fuck giving them a single penny more to steal Venezuelan oil. If the people of Venezuela want Exxon or Chevron there, they can invite them in and cut their own deal. I’m not paying for a goddman thing so Trump can collect more bribes and soulless CEOs can buy a third or fourth yacht.

This whole thing is going to be a fucking disaster, and I’m tired of MY fucking money being set on fire by neo-con fucksticks with delusions of empire.

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Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

There are 300 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

“They said it was like having a teacher in their pocket,” she said. The tools could help students work through a particular problem, brainstorm ideas, research for projects and provide feedback, she said.

 "Help" and "work through" are doing some heavy lifting here. "Provide feedback" remains one of the popular items in the AI arsenal. I remain unconvinced. Feedback that does not understand or include student intent-- what they thought they were doing, what they meant to do-- is just correction. "Do this instead of that." If you don't know why the student did "that" in the first place, you can't provide much in the way of useful correction, and since AI does not "know" anything, all it can do is edit the student's work for them. What do students learn from this? This is the pedagogical equivalent of an adult who shoulders the student aside and fixes their work while the student watches.

But the proud example of an AI project, shared by the superintendent in a board meeting, is even worse. 

Students in a middle school social studies class used AI to create and question “digital peers” and “characters” from the Middle Ages while the teacher guided them in evaluating responses for accuracy and evidence.

Many teachers (including me) would recognize this assignment immediately, only Back In The Day, we would have the students create and role play the characters themselves. In Mrs. O'Keefe's eighth grade English class (back in 1971), we had to research a historical person and then portray them as a guest on a talk show (my friends Andy and Stewart drew Van Gogh, and in the middle of his interview he became over-emotional and cut off his own ear, complete with fake blood).  My sister-in-teaching Merrill annually had her students put Milton's Paradise Lost on trial, with students role playing characters from the work.

This is a variation on that same assignment except AI does the role playing and students are transformed from actors into spectators.

Almost any version of this assignment would be better. Let students role play. Let them craft faux social media accounts for their characters. Anything that had them actively creating the character based on their own research, rather than feeding some stuff into an AI and sitting back to observe and judge the result. What does the teacher even assess in such an assignment? How is this any better than just watching a video about the topic?

If you're considering incorporating AI in your lesson and wondering how to decide what to have it do, here's a hint-- do not have it turn students from active participants into spectators who simply watch what the bot does for them. Students should be main characters in their own education, and not observers, sidelined so that the plagiarism machine can shine. 

Installing new ed tech? Implementing new policies or procedures? I wish with all my heart that the People In Charge would ask a simple set of questions.

Who is helped by this? Which job does this make easier?  

This has always been an issue, because it is easy to sit in an administration office and come up with procedures and paperwork that would make your life easier. And that's a perfectly human impulse-- to look at the work you're slogging through and think, "Man, this would be so much easier if I had my subordinates do X." 

In education, it's often something data related. "I would love to have data on how many left-handed students bring their own pencils," muses some admin. "I wonder who could collect that data for me?" (Spoiler alert: it will be the teachers). 

You don't have to look any further than the Big Standardized Test, which is the result of a whole bunch of policymakers saying, "Well, we could impose some of our favorite policies if only we had some data to excuse them."

The astonishing thing about applying the "Whose job does this make easier" lens to education is how truly rare it is that the answer is "teachers." 

It's not always huge stuff. When my old school switched from a paper attendance system run out of the main office over to a computerized system run by teachers, it created one more nuisance. Now every period had to have a built in moment within the first five minutes of class that allowed me to go to my desktop computer and record attendance, rather than doing it on paper to be checked later against the master attendance list. 

Was this a massive inconvenience? Of course not. But what generally grinds classroom teachers down is not the massive weight of large policy ideas, but death by a thousand small paper cuts. 

And this was a case where the central office was very proud of how this saved labor and made their job easier. But many labor-saving programs are actually labor-moving programs, and in school, the labor is most commonly moved to teachers. A thousand paper cuts.

Imagine a district where the administration said, "Yes, this would make my job easier, but it would put more burden on the teachers, so let's not do it." If you don't have to imagine that district, God bless you.

I am not arguing that the goal should be to make teaching the easiest walk-in-the-park job ever envisioned; that is neither possible nor desirable. But the basic function of a school administration is to make it possible for every teacher in the building to do the best job they can, and every administrative decision should be examined through that lens. Every decision should be centered on the question, "Will this support teaching in classrooms?"

A whole family of ed tech products are based on the proposition "If teachers put their work into these tech platforms, it will be easier for administration to monitor them." Digital lesson plans don't make it any easier for teachers to plan, and in fact can add time to the whole process, but they do make it easier for admins to monitor those plans (and in extreme cases, admins may have visions of an entire digitized program, so that the teacher can be more easily replaced).

The newest tech wave of AI products should face the same question. What job does this AI-powered whizbang actually make easier? Is it, for instance, easier to have an AI extrude lesson plans which the teacher must then edit and check for errors? Who does this actually help? Does it help a teacher to automate the brainwork of teaching (hint: does it help athletes to have a robot lift weights for them). 

Teachers aren't the only stakeholders who need to be considered. Yes, it may make communication easier for the school, but does it really help parents and students to have to download one more app in order to get important information from the school?

Even worse is the tech that is adopted simply because it's cool, with no idea that it will help anyone at all. It's just cool, you know, and we've heard other schools are getting it. Surely you'll figure out some use for it. 

The thing is, every new tech a teacher adopts (willingly or not) is either helping or hurting. Even if it's not actively making the job harder, a non-helping piece of tech represents opportunity cost, money that could have been spent on something that was actually useful. 

So administrations, I beg you-- before you adopt, ask yourself who would be helped by this new technowidget, and if the answer is not "The people who do the actual work of teaching students," maybe ask yourself if it's really worth purchasing.

These are dark times but I will continue to tell the stories you need to hear in a clear (and usually profane) voice. If I entertain/anger/inform you, preferably all three, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!).

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Let’s be perfectly clear: Our latest military adventure in South America will end in disaster. We will not establish a functioning democracy free of corruption. We will not purge the drug cartels. We will not end crime or migration. At best, we will leave things more or less as they are and spend billions trying to steal Venezuela’s oil before finally giving up.

At worst, we throw the entire country into violent chaos and destabilize the entire region. This will lead to increased poverty, crime, and even MORE migration as people flee the violence and deprivation we caused. This is the most likely scenario or something close to it for reasons I’ll discuss in a minute.

It’s important we be clear about this: When this plot to steal the oil fails, and it will, there will be a huge, disastrous mess left behind with the giant bootprint of the United States all over it. America went in guns ablazin’, taking names and kickin’ ass, oorah!, but then failed to achieve anything of substance yet again.

The humiliation will be monumental, and every drop of shame and blame will be dumped on the Republican Party. We must make sure that happens because god fucking dammit, the first thing the press and the GOP and the people who don’t pay attention are going to do is try to blame “both sides.”

Because when everyone is guilty, no one is guilty. And then no one is held accountable.

Fuuuuuck that. We all know who did this, and there is no fucking way I am letting those pieces of shit dump their garbage on our laps again so the fucking collaborators in the press can whitewash their neo-con warmongering. Keep those fucking receipts and be prepared to shove them down the throats of scumbags like Dana Bash in three years:

Today, it’s a great idea. Tomorrow, no one will be responsible. Just you fucking watch.

Here’s the reason we know the regime’s brilliant idea to seize Venezuela’s oil will fail: Since the end of WWII, we have toppled numerous dictators. Several of them in Latin America. Not once have we succeeded in doing anything but making the situation worse. We, the mighty United States, have not once, not one fucking time!, left behind a country with a vibrant democracy, a thriving economy, a happy populace. Our legacy has uniformly been one of death, destruction, and arrogant ignorance. This last part being central to why we keep fucking it up.

Despite having access to any number of experts and natives, in our own government, willing to explain the ins and outs of the cultures and governments we blindly seek to remake in our own image, ‘Murika! has a habit of shooting first, asking questions never. Then we’re shocked SHOCKED when things fall apart again and again and again. Who could have foreseen that not understanding the people we’re trying to rule would lead to friction and compounding complications? Truly a mystery for the fucking ages we may never solve…

Now, add to this equation an American regime run by white nationalists who view Latinos as subhuman. Add to this the fact that these particular white nationalists are, even for their ilk, uniquely stupid and historically incompetent. The cherry on top of this coming clusterfuck cake is their utter lawlessness. By that I mean their only motivation, really, is personal greed. They’re not even in Venezuela to steal the oil for America. The Trump regime is there to loot the country for themselves and their own personal bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.

If a competent American government went all in on regime change with an eye to “bringing democracy” to South America while ensuring US power and privilege were protected, it would still be a tall order. But the fucking clown show we have in charge now? There is no possibility at all and let’s be honest, they haven’t planned for anything past the “Drop bombs and brag on TV” stage. If it’s not written down in Project 2025, they have no idea what the fuck they’re doing. And even when it IS written down in Project 2025, the second the real world deviates from what they thought was going to happen, which it has repeatedly, the morons in the regime spiral out of control, completely unprepared and clueless.

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So, yes, this will all blow up in their dumbfuck faces. It’s been two goddamn days and we STILL do not know which imbecile from the regime will be in charge of “running” Venezuela. Will it be Marco “I have 20 jobs” Rubio? Maybe! Oh, wait. Now we’re hearing it might be Stephen “Kill All The Brown People” Miller:

The White House is weighing giving Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff and homeland security adviser, a more elevated role in overseeing post-Maduro operations in Venezuela, the Washington Post reports.

Miller was behind the campaign to blow up the boats in the Caribbean because he’s a murderer who gets off on having people he hates killed. He’s been telling Trump for months that Venezuela “stole our oil” when they nationalized their oil industry back in the 70s. I promise you, Miller has visions of personal wealth and a lot of dead Venezuelans dancing through his creepy bulbous Nazi head.

Regardless, it’s clear no planning whatsoever was done for what happens next. Kind of important to know what to do when the dog catches the car, no? But Trump is at the helm, a dying pedophile desperate for a win, something to make people stop talking about Jeffery Epstein (not gonna happen, you kiddie fucking degenerate), and immediate gratification. Whatever plans we DO form will change from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour (minute to minute?) as Trump tweets out whatever deranged stupidity leaks into his diaper next. I’m sure that won’t push Venezuela into a more defiant stance or tip it into anarchy. What could possibly go fucking wrong with such a strategic genius at the helm of the United States?

And in three years, when the regime, ours that is, is ousted, the Venezuelan adventure will have metastasized into another foreign quagmire, draining our resources. Or turned into a free-for-all in South America, fueling instability and migration at our border.

When we have to clean up the Republican mess, it is absolutely vital we do not allow the press and the GOP to clutch their pearls and cry their big sobby tears and wail to the sky, “HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?! WHY DIDN’T DEMOCRATS STOP THIS?!”

If you think that won't happen, I really need you to read this tweet:

Kat Rosenfield is not a central figure in journalism, but her attitude is very much how the legacy press treats Trump and the entire GOP. They never do anything. Nothing is their fault. It just…happens. Republicans have no agency because of COURSE they act the way they act. They can’t help themselves so what is there to do about it?

This is why I say constantly, Republicans are not held to a lower standard; they’re held to no standard at all.

I promise you, they will 100% try to do the same here. Trump has been fed delusions of empire by the fools around him as well as his puppetmaster, Putin. Putin, who has delusions of his own of re-establishing a vast Russian empire with dominion over all of Europe. He can’t even conquer Ukraine. But he expects to conquer all of Europe with its much larger and vastly more powerful military? Sure. Good luck with that, Vladimir.

The assumption for Republicans, though, as always, is that nothing matters because there will be no consequences. Who went to prison for lying us into Iraq? No one. Who went to prison for lying us into Vietnam? No one. Consequences are for the little people.

This will all fall apart, and everyone involved will immediately seek to blame “both sides.” In the best case scenario (for Republicans), it will be used as a cudgel against the next Democratic president. The press used the withdrawal from Afghanistan to maul Joe Biden. I promise you, a lot of “journalists” and even more Republicans laughed themselves silly that they got away with pinning it all on Biden and erasing Trump’s culpability entirely.

It’s up to us to take their cudgel and shove it down their collective throat when they try again. We may have to clean up their fucking mess because we’re the adults in the room, but I’ll be goddamned if we’re going to keep taking the fucking blame for it.

The monkeys with the guns pulled the trigger. They can take all the credit for the fucking disasters they caused. The subtext for 2028, the one thing underlying every other message about affordability and democracy and equality, must be accountability. Without it, Republicans get away with their crimes and they’ll just do it again. That cannot be allowed.

They have to pay for what they’ve done. All of them.

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