Xi Jinping watching the U.S. squander its power but also another example of a regime security focused military being totally useless.

@sky.skymarchini.net has been posting about this. The idea the Trump admin is just gonna flood the US with Venezuelan oil ahead of the midterms (or that US oil companies would even want to) as some sort of genius gambit is delusional from both for Trump and bluesky doomers

"trump being stuck in 1987" is an underrated take. Most of his shit - beefs about the trade deficit, NATO spending, and foreign aid, for example - are from that era.

The only thing I *will* say about this shitshow is that self-flagellating in public going "wehhh the world should boycott America and all Americans as monsters forever and ever for this" is just performative bullshit trying to absolve yourself of responsibility of doing anything actually helpful

"i believe in a constitutional republic to a point, but things need doing" do you fucking hear yourselves

Gee I wonder why there isn't a political group in power that panders to this website, it can't be because it literally only knows how to attack Democrats or anything

Every person who stayed home in 2024 or argued that Harris was as bad as Trump or worse or that regardless of outcomes the US had to be punished for this or that who is now acting outraged and appalled should be entirely ignored, honestly. Congrats, this is the bed you helped make.

Look fellow libs, "international law" is the functional equivalent of Kavanaugh Stops. A flimsy pretext, and the guys with guns can do whatever they want. You want to appeal to something, how about Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution? Similarly toothless, but at least it is ours.

isolationism 1.0 = aggression in the americas isolationism 2.0 = also aggression in the americas, this time because president grandpa likes watching helmet killcams

there’s a “rhetorical squishiness for me, not for thee” thing that really gets under my skin where it’s gauche to say, even in a statement strongly opposing the invasion, that Maduro is bad from people who thought critical support to Harris against Trump was not only gauche but actively harmful

If you stayed home If you "held your nose" If you said "but what about" You helped this happen Don't you dare be angry about it

said on the show a couple months back when the boat strikes stated: no one’s gonna do shit they all think - maybe rightly! - they can just wait it out, because the world isn’t really prepared politically for an authentically rogue us

People need to keep this in mind- Maduro's VZ has very few friends outside of Russia, China, and contingently a few other SA countries. We'll see what happens, but I wouldn't place high odds on this resulting in more than some angry statements from the UN and nothing else.

"Maduro getting arrested is the result of an internal Venezuelan power-play by Maduro's VP, who is also a Communist" is the answer that would make literally everyone mad, so I intuitively think it's true.

the complete and total lack of anything resembling concepts of a plan for the future of Venezuelan leadership betrays the fact that they mostly did this for content the prank YouTuber school of foreign policy

You all didnt build anything! You came in and acted like a wrecking ball lol

It was here before they showed up, they weren't responsible and they actively tried to sabotage moderaton and pretty much every turn. The reason theres a rule against death threats thats enforced so hard is because they kept telling everyone to go off themselves in visceral and violent manners.

You all torched your own third party moderation systems in a fit of libindnal glee, not just destroying the one you said was bad, but anyone adjacent to them too, to the point nobody wants third party moderation anymore. You took the tools you were handed and shit on them and lit them on fire.

we are where we are because people in power chose, time and again, to give Republicans’ feelings veto power over the justice system. we will be back here time and again until people in power make a deliberate choice to restore the independent judiciary by ensuring Republicans aren’t above the law.

"it's about oil, just like GWB and Iraq" no, and that wasn't About Oil either, as evidenced by the fact that America isn't presently getting rich off of Iraqi oilfields it's much stupider and fouler and more awful and fucked-up than that; Putin attacking Ukraine wasn't /about/ mineral rights either

Doubling down. It is not a controversial take to give respect to AP and Reuters journalists in Venezuela, most of who are local or from Lat Am, currently risking their lives, and who are paid for their work — so everyone else can benefit from their reporting.

It’s old-fashioned to defend mainstream journalism these days but some of the most reliable reporting from people actually on the ground will be the AP and Reuters the next 24 hours. Your Substack journalist writing takes will be using frontline reporting from them.

everyone who told me trump was the "peace president" owes me $5

i really cannot stress highly enough that US news media is protecting him by refusing to report on the insane things he is constantly saying

He even got a green-light for oil from Maduro diplomatically, this isn't about oil, it's for fancams and dick-swinging and that's even more damning than a goddamn resource war.

Venezuela ships this blend because it has to mix their main crude oil reserve, from the Orinoco belt (which is EXTREMELY heavy, gravity 8° or so) with lighter crude from elsewhere for it to be shippable. And that’s the problem with Venezuela’s oil reserves: they’re basically sludge.

OK, crash course in oil. Oil has two main gradings, viscosity (light or heavy) and sulfur (sweet or sour). A light (low viscosity) and sweet (low sulfur) oil is easier to process into gasoline and other products than a heavy and sour one, so the light & sweet oil commands a premium price.

Trump’s opposition to liberal norms must mean that he is opposed to the use of military force. I am a super genius

The Glengarry leads bsky.app/profile/tiny...

"she could have just" No. Fucking no. Take responsibility. Take responsibility for your words and actions. *You* could have "just". But you didn't.

It could have been a goddamn fucking potato against Donald Trump. A used sponge. It was up to *you* to respond "anything but Donald Trump". The collective you. This is what happens when you give up your civic duty. Learn from it.

"Well that's her problem" No, actually, it's *your* problem, because when a fascist sat down and said "I am a fascist and I will ruin America", you decided to get huffy and self-righteous rather than shut up, sit down, and do your civic duty.

We could have had the hyper competent lady who was the most progressive Senator, but no, she wasn't good enough when the alternative was the ancient guy now waging an illegal and immoral war. Great job, everyone.

The MAGA movement is electorally unsustainable for many reasons, but the most basic one is that they do not understand what real voters want because their only gauge for "public opinion" is how many likes their latest drone strike video got. And it has never occurred to them that bots don't vote.

It is telling how even high quality outlets like the America's Quarterly podcast often don't think through scenarios where Trump's violent incompetence might cause an electoral collapse of the US Right or even more chaos in Venezuela that affect his ability to shape outcomes

I know several oil barons, I’ve had the oil and gas industry as clients in a past life: none of them want the Venezuelan oil, it’s dog shit quality and getting the PDVSA fields up to modern standards would take 20 years! It’s just trump being stuck in 1987

We're fighting so many wars we had to bump this one to a later date to accommodate a different one. Donald the Dove.

A lot of officers hanging their future careers and perhaps freedom on a badly-drafted OLC memo and perhaps vague conceptions of the presidential pardon powers.

Something will happen

Reminder that impeachment requires: * Mike Johnson to allow a vote * At least some House Republicans to vote in favor * John Thune to allow a trial and vote * A lot of Senate Republicans to vote to convict Republicans are the obstacle. They’ve always been the obstacle.

there's no amount of OLC jujitsu that can justify this shit legally

this is me saying this: the bare minimum acceptable response from Dems in 2026 will involve rounding up and punishing every single human in the chain of command who performed these actions to the fullest extent to which it is possible and it frustrates me that we DON'T have effective means of demand

This is why @dhnexon.bsky.social is right. We need institutional reform proposals ready from Day 1 in 2029. There may only be one more chance, for a generation. We will need to do it, quickly & on a grand scale, & listening to The Abundance Of Popularism crowd about how we can't do that is poison.

If nothing happens post Jan 20 2025 and it's just insane Trump but nothing happens, this flies with he US public and probably works. But 2025 happened, he's tanked and now this. It's a huge problem. And this is a giant surprise to the US public. This is a death blow to the regime.

Yep there’s no legal justification here. Either we have laws or we don’t.

kind of wild that in the span of like 20 years we've circled all the way back around to "get a film camera and never post any photos of yourself or anyone else really online ever" being the most reasonable position

wow, what kind of vested interest could Matt Taibbi have had in Cuomo winning? now to take a big swig of vodka and read his book about his time in Moscow.

for instance: guy asked my sim on a Valentine’s Day equivalent date, took her to a dive bar, then got arrested in the middle of it for stealing