Obviously this is racist claptrap but I do want to point out: If a member of Congress went to the floor and leaked an upcoming military operation, that would in fact be 100% consistent with the Constitutional text and the Framers' intent. They created a special immunity just for stuff like that.

my take since the inauguration is that people do not understand that *we do not have the power right now.* the best time to stop trump was november 2024. now our position is different: we have to get back into power.

The average liberal (not rando leftist online searching for clout) is aspirational and believes in the American project. The average conservative wants to turn the country into a combination of Hungary and Russia.

The significant part of it for Americans is going to be recognizing the role the republican party as currently constituted plays in the alliance of global antidemocratic forces

according to the constitution, trump is not the legitimate president. we need to start thinking about what that will mean as we retake power. and mamdani? mamdani shows us how. www.liberalcurrents.com/mamdani-teac...

‘Murica!

No cheating. Reskeet with the most recent picture of your pet

*cue Duel of the Fates playing*

I think it’s important to frame what’s happening as fully outside the realm of normal governance because framing it as a policy or even legal dispute grants it undue legitimacy. These are crimes that merit - require, really - a stronger response than a transition of power

Okay here’s an actual take: the fascist international is at war with the very concept of legitimacy.

Tbh I think the way to handle that is to tell the ICC and another member state that we personally don’t enforce their warrants but if they need any of our stuff the key is under the mat and sympathetic Americans on leave will not be questioned too closely.

“What is grief, if not an irrational hatred for both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris persevering?”

Rubio was born in Miami and his parents haven't lived in Cuba since 1956, when they willingly immigrated to the US instead of coming later with the Revolution's aftermath, which Rubio once claimed his parents were refugees of. He really is a poser. Or I guess he has secondhand generational trauma?

Guess they’re going to keep doing this until we get black hawk down

"also, the oil isn't any good and most of the business leaders aren't with the president also we forgot to check with the people this is a coup on behalf of to see if they were willing to do a coup for us don't worry about it though"

Almost Human

I love that the shopkeeper also does a subtle code switch to meet Brodie more in the middle and has a set of arrangements for the gangster types. It's a little humorous, but also, a darker aspect of all the murders around the drug trade.

Time to rewatch season 2, episode 7 of The Wire. I like flower shops, I think I'd like to work in one. Or having a little greenhouse for myself to work on flowers in.

The present is stupid. The future will be worse.

Substantial amount of ink spilled in how the Ellisons hired Bari Weiss to fundamentally re-orient CBS News to launder right wing perspectives on behalf of the White House. It's an important story, no error in observing. Same attention needs to be on American national security think tanks in DC.

a level of realpolitik here: the United States is unlikely to face serious international consequences for being lunatics acting with impunity, in large part because we are lunatics acting with impunity at the end of the day this is going to be up to us to solve, domestically

Hell they want to pivot to renewables, since the extraction process is eating up more and more of the profits. This is literally just people thinking the Zoolander coal mining bit is realistic.

imo it’s the secret third thing: this admin is deeply stupid and thinks it can loot oil that and mixed in is jsoc mindset and bap fan service as constituent outreach plus Rubio having trumps ear last

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

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.

"This actually isn't about oil" is often perfectly correct and it's guaranteed to make the most noxious, stupid people on the internet lose their ever-living minds.

That scene in the pilot where Rawls drops a hard r casually is always so jarring on rewatches. Rawls is obviously a scumbag in other ways but you never hear him talk like that again. (The closest he gets is his comments about affirmative action to Carcetti a few years later.)

yes, I was disappointed that they went back to the original characters for a lot of the focus after season 2. I wanted to see new kinds of messed up criminal conspiracies!

It's been a bit since I've kept up with rewatching The Wire, and within that timespan both James Ransone and Isiah Whitlock Jr. have died, but I'll be starting up again now with season 2 episode 5, Undertow.

It would take like 20 years to get the infrastructure up to modern capabilities that it could impact Canadian output for example. Its one of those times the "us invades other countries for oil" is spectacularly dumb no matter who is saying it.

IMO "war for oil" frame risks glossing over A) deeper history & politics around the US in LatAm, & B) the fact that the US doesn't actually control its oil companies—we're one of the few major oil producers on the planet where the state doesn't exercise much decision-making power over that industry

halfway convinced they’re going to release maduro in like a week

It's a rare man that's willing to acknowledge his own insignificance, so I guess Congressman Bomber Jacket at least has that going for him.

From a conservative Republican.

Ehh were partially in this because OPEC raising oil prices doesn't do anything anymore with US output being what it is. Like the war in Ukraine barely effected oil prices, this probably isnt either. But prices on bananas or coffee going up would be just as bad.

#BeyondtheGates episode 200! Time to see everyone reacting to the cancer news. I like that Hayley is tired of being a rich housewife. I can't wait for Dani to find out she was right about Hayley. Naomi & Chelsea walking in with gifts to hear Anita talk about cancer sure was bad timing.

I think this makes clear that we're at one of those "you made a mistake somewhere along the way" moments, w/r/t war powers Also that Congress desperately needs to start asserting itself in this area

Wow, the people who hated Democrats for over a decade are now creating yet more reasons to hate Democrats, from whole cloth? You don't say! Quick reminder that Mike Johnson *immediately* adjourned the House today in order to prevent any Dems from doing *anything* official.

Starting an adult with Andor is crazy. Imagine hearing about the Emperor in meetings and then three or four movies later you find out he looks a thousand years old and shoots lightning out of his little T Rex arms.

“ambush” is unequivocally the correct first episode to watch. i’d even watch it before the movie (if watching the movie is something you’re gonna do). it’s the thesis of the entire show

We’ve apparently captured maduro with no real legal justification and then instead of installing the Venezuelan opposition we’re like oh yeah, his vice president is cool, she’s gonna run the country for us, what the fuck are we doing

Second funniest is th le VP of Venezuela is not compliant, the rest of the Latin American global south rallies around Venezuela and they cut off trade with the US fucking up pricing even more on a shit ton of essential goods.

Amazing how even when Trump acts as unilaterally as it is possible to be, some big brains on here immediately blame the Democrats. You guys have a disease, you’re broken

Their own sublimated guilt at having worked to get Trump elected.

Everything they do is for Content. It’s all TV to them. They’re playing characters in a show and they think the coolest characters are the villains

I saw the same. The first picture looks like search results for “venezuela”. The second looks like OSINTDefender’s feed. They are watching OSINT accounts.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“You know, you walk out the door. You see someone that you know, and they ask you how you are, and you just have to say that you're fine, when you're not really fine, but you just can't get into it because they would never understand.”

Just like how Putin believes Ukraine doesn't actually make decisions, just take orders from NATO, I think Rubio truly believes Venezuela doesn't make decisions but actually takes orders from Cuba. Also, can you imagine Cubans exiled to Florida for decades feeling entitled to property claims in Cuba?

Rubio and Trump just joked about saving $50 million by taking Maduro themselves instead of letting someone else get the bounty. Which leads me to wonder how much this operation cost.