The Donald Trump is Batcrap Crazy and The Leader of the GOP Thread

[ZoWie]

Someone also noted that Venezuelan crude is very heavy, and very expensive to refine, and only one oil company ever built a refinery for it.

Could it just be that his numbers were down and he needed a war?

I don't know if that's true, but I do know that New York put together a huge ad hoc peace march in record time. Nice work!

[Motor City]

So in the media news media and social and pundits political and otherwise, what they are meaning when they blend together and harmonize and say Maduro was a bad guy and Authoritarian dictator is not things like the Jamal Khashoggi killing but rather they mean socialism, because to some well off and wealthy people having social safety nets is authoritarian and restricts their freedom to be brutal and cruel and abusive as they want to, to the poorest people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_T-s5pwd7E

Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado speaks at America Business Forum in Miami, Florida.

[ZoWie]

This is the same excuse they used when Iraq wouldn't sell us oil. The fact remains that dictators are just fine with the US right, as long as they sell us oil at prices acceptable to the oligarchy.

Now he's going after Greenland. What do they have, ice?

The problem is the US right. They have been allowed to grab power everywhere, and they want us back in the 19th century.

[Motor City]

This is the same excuse they used when Iraq wouldn't sell us oil. The fact remains that dictators are just fine with the US right, as long as they sell us oil at prices acceptable to the oligarchy.

Now he's going after Greenland. What do they have, ice?

The problem is the US right. They have been allowed to grab power everywhere, and they want us back in the 19th century.

Another similarity with Iraq was bush telling the world nothing but lies leading up to it. They also initially conveyed that the hard part was over and it probably wouldnt last 6 months.

Americans have become traumatized and radicalized by a delusional and vindictive economic system and policies. Some are stealing new trucks off the lot and getting chased down freeways full of men women and children by the new militarized police force, others are boat jacking oil tankers and stealing countries leaders, robbing them of their democracy, peace and prosperity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeI6iTaJA9Y

Venezuela

[ap215]

The potential 2026 Blue Wave can't come soon enough

Minnesota lawmakers, family condemn Trump for sharing "outrageous" conspiracy theories on Melissa Hortman's assassination

The children of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman are asking President Trump to remove a video he reposted on social media Saturday alleging Gov. Tim Walz is behind their mother's assassination.

Walz responded to the president's Truth Social post, saying it is "dangerous, depraved behavior from the sitting president of the United States."

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/ ... wtab-en-us

[ZoWie]

Yo Trump voters... how's it going? You have a chance to answer this question any month now when primaries start.

[ap215]

Oh he speaks the truth because this is what we want to put an end to him and The GOP's bullshit

Trump stresses importance of midterms to House GOP, warns Dems will try to impeach him if they gain control

In a wide-ranging speech over nearly 90 minutes, the president touted what he views as some of his biggest wins in office as he approaches the one-year mark of his second term back in the White House. He touched on his far-reaching tariff agenda, his crime and immigration crackdowns in American cities and his fresh capture of the deposed Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro – although he offered limited new details on his plans ahead for the Latin American country as questions loom about his pledge for the U.S. to "run" it in the interim.

With months to go until voters across the country fill out ballots once again, Trump commended House Republicans for what they accomplished with a small margin in the lower chamber last year.

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/ ... share_clip

[ZoWie]

All you know is that the Dow is up something like 1000 points since the Maduro op. Must be the first war scare ever to cause that kind of reaction.

Still think it's not The Donald taking care of his corporate buddies?

[ZoWie]

The US Coast Guard just boarded two more tankers. Still think it's not about oil?

[ZoWie]

I made the mistake of reading the news just now.

1. Oil company executives will meet with the president on Friday. Still think Venezuela wasn't about oil?

2. ICE shot and killed an unarmed street demonstrator in Minneapolis.

3. The consensus in Europe is that NATO will collapse, fulfilling Putin's wildest dreams, if the US tries to annex Greenland.

Say how's that making America great again thing going?

[Motor City]

I made the mistake of reading the news just now.

1. Oil company executives will meet with the president on Friday. Still think Venezuela wasn't about oil?

2. ICE shot and killed an unarmed street demonstrator in Minneapolis.

3. The consensus in Europe is that NATO will collapse, fulfilling Putin's wildest dreams, if the US tries to annex Greenland.

Say how's that making America great again thing going?

It was about oil and nationalization and social safety nets and social safety nets effects on how oil profits are reckoned. Biden was trying to do the same thing but in a less obvious way. both were terrible connivances that come from siding with empire and the most extreme wealthy and powerful over everyone else. In trumps case you can literally see how ugly and horrible what's taking place looks.

[ZoWie]

Exactly. The only good thing about any of this is that the problem is now clearly revealed for everyone to see. It's class. Right now, race and gender are subsets of class. Just like in the song, money makes the world go round.

Now that we have seen the problem in full relief, the only remaining question is what to do about the ruling class and its full-on reactionary deadly-force assault against everyone else. These ARE the droids we're looking for.

Paint the signs. Wave the banners. Hit the streets. Hunker down for a long struggle on the scale of the labor movement of the late 19th/ early 20th centuries. The technology has changed several times since then, but human greed has not. This, friends, is The Big One.

[rainwater]

a fucking rapist in the WH and merica seems fine with this.

[ZoWie]

My guess, based on what vague statistics are made public, is that a statistically significant number of Americans are onto this asshole. Yes, I just called the President of the United States an asshole. Come and get me.

[Motor City]

Exactly. The only good thing about any of this is that the problem is now clearly revealed for everyone to see. It's class. Right now, race and gender are subsets of class. Just like in the song, money makes the world go round.

Now that we have seen the problem in full relief, the only remaining question is what to do about the ruling class and its full-on reactionary deadly-force assault against everyone else. These ARE the droids we're looking for.

Paint the signs. Wave the banners. Hit the streets. Hunker down for a long struggle on the scale of the labor movement of the late 19th/ early 20th centuries. The technology has changed several times since then, but human greed has not. This, friends, is The Big One.

The problem I see is having so much might so much extreme power and wealth that trump and other U.S. leaders have become one dimensional in using fear and intimidation and dirty tricks and violence and destruction and force to get what it wants, the ability to humble itself and reason and be just, has steadily regressed as its might has consolidated and it reminds me of that line in the R.B. Morris song "thats how every empire falls"

Ah but mercy cannot find him
out in the shadows where he calls
Forsaking all his better angels
That's how every empire falls

The strength, the might, the extreme wealth that they brag so much about is really their weakness. Its leading our nation to all manner of toxic friction and ruin.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7vElHMGvjw

[ZoWie]

Agreed that the problem comes when one side or the other in any political process gets most of the wealth and establishment of power behind it. At that point, dialog stops and repression begins. We let it get to that point after World War II, first with the much-cited "military industrial complex." At some point after that, technology created another power class in the civilian business process, and now here we are back in the 19th century.

The trouble with analysis is that it finds problems but does not solve them. Solving them is a messy process, usually involving conflict of one kind or another, and entrenched interests do not go without a fight. It's too bad we reached that stage due to voter apathy and media deception, but we're there and now it's rumble time. A good first step toward avoiding an otherwise tragic historical transition would be fighting the bullshit machine. We can't go up against a Federal law enforcement machine programmed to do the bidding of the upper classes, but we can go against the means by which it maintains whatever minimal credibility it has left.

I've already started by opening dialogues here and elsewhere. Dialogues don't win revolutions, but it's the first step in any political change we've ever seen in the historical record.

[Motor City]

Can you imagine how they feel though after all this menacing and conniving, brutality, threats and sanctions and still are stonewalled, that instead of it making things easier to access it only made it harder and even opened the door for its rivals to gain advantages.

I think its testament to both political parties in the United States being more on the side of empire and authoritarianism and consolidated wealth and power than they are on the side of American constituents their democracy, the country's wellbeing. The policy for both parties has been similar to what took place in Venezuela with the pressure and sanctions and regime change, brutality to all who love justice and mercy and democracy.

Well know when the democrats and republicans switch to the side of its people and democracy and justice in how the power they have is used and aligned it wont be hard to see like it is now because the power is real and works.

[ZoWie]

Both parties are machines, and like any machines they require fuel. The fuel in this case is money. The result is that the fuel supply is controlled largely by a very small and oligarchic class of business leaders who have cut themselves in for large pieces of the commerce action. We have watched this class become ever more wealthy, more self-indulgent, more decadent, and less inclined to even pretend to do the American Freedom Thing. The flap over Epstein is a very small version of the exponentially larger revulsion that caused the French Revolution. (It was class-based and bottom up. The US revolution was top-down, and more about taxes and divvying up the profits from world trade. The differences are small, but important.)

The good thing about the US is that it has always been possible for oppressed classes, and we've had plenty of those, to gain at least a minimally satisfactory version of American freedom through non-violent or minimally violent means. One would hope that this is the case again, but for it to work we'll need a lot more action than we're seeing now. Marches in the street make you feel better, and they also grab media time that otherwise all goes to the oligarchy, but they don't finish the job. You have to break something to do that. What we break is negotiable. I still favor nonviolent means, Ghandi-style passive resistance, and economic tactics like strikes and boycotts targeting the sponsors of right wing media. Otherwise your adversaries are armed with nuclear missiles and nerve gas. The unfortunate thing is that for such tactics to work, you need a very large number of fully committed activists who are in it for the duration.

Will we ever hit critical mass? THAT is the question.

[ap215]

Disqualified

Giving Trump the Nobel peace prize medal is ‘absurd’, say Norwegian politicians

Political leaders in Norway have condemned the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s “absurd” decision to present her Nobel peace prize medal to Donald Trump, accusing the US president of being a “classic showoff” who takes credit for other people’s work.

The Nobel laureate gave her medal to Trump at the White House on Thursday “in recognition [of] his unique commitment [to’] our freedom”. Several hours later, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Machado “presented me with her Nobel peace prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/ ... oliticians

[Motor City]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VdCXaI57yDg

Who is Marina Corina Machado, really?

From her decades of support from the United States to her repeated calls for violence against other Venezuelans, there's a lot more to Maria Corina Machado than meets the eye.

CODEPINK's Latin America team breaks down the truth about Machado.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wBIqIaCd0Iw

This is how much Maduro supporters are being paid...

Contrary to what US media wants you to think, Venezuelans are on the streets because they are asserting their own sovereignty. They oppose the US kidnapping their president and reject US attempts to seize control of their resources.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ftuFPZks3v8

The people of Venezuela are not hiding.

The people of Venezuela are not hiding. They’re out in the streets. They’re closing ranks, organizing, showing up for each other, and defending their country.

Workers, students, neighborhood groups, communal councils, and social movements are mobilizing across the country because they know exactly what’s at stake.

This is a people who’ve faced empire before and know what resistance looks like. They understand that sovereignty isn’t handed down from above, it’s defended from below.

No blood for oil!!! Free Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro now!!!

[Motor City]

An interesting interview on United States and Venezuela history and where its brought us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUdMkLWv2Qs

America’s Shadow in Latin America: Venezuela, Oil, and the Return of U.S. Imperial Power

Why is the U.S. involved in Venezuela and what does oil have to do with it?

In this thoughtful conversation, Marianne Williamson interviews the Center for Economic Policy and Research's Alex Main about U.S. foreign policy, Venezuela’s political crisis, economic sanctions, and the history of American intervention in the region.

They discuss Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro, U.S. oil interests, Cold War ideology, and the growing fear among Latin American nations of renewed U.S. imperialism. This conversation provides crucial context missing from mainstream media coverage.

The U.S. put sanctions on Venezuela to cause disorder and chaos hunger and all manner of disfunction for the country and its poorest people, causing it to have to sell lots of really cheap oil to U.S. rivals instead.

[ZoWie]

As usual, the US policy is badly advised, and will blow up in our faces. This whole imperialist putsch has been tried, usually by other Republican presidents, and it has yet to be anything but a disaster in the long term.

It's too bad that the people who can't learn always wind up running this country.

[Motor City]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbhW0JKWI6g


Protester blinded by federal agent in O.C. speaks out

A 21-year-old activist blinded by a less lethal munition during an anti-ICE protest outside the federal building in Santa Ana on Jan. 9 sits down with KTLA's Chris Wolfe for an interview about the violent and harrowing ordeal. This report aired Jan. 14, 2026.

[ap215]

MLK’s daughter Bernice King just shut down Trump’s Civil Rights lie. This is truth vs. revisionism.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uJMmJF5aAFw

[Motor City]

MLK’s daughter Bernice King just shut down Trump’s Civil Rights lie. This is truth vs. revisionism.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uJMmJF5aAFw

Yea Civil Rights Act did good things for everyone, it reaffirmed the dignity that was always there but not always recognized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv5xonFSC4c

Redemption Song