Tag: Venezuela

Sunday Morning Reading

Boulder bustling

The world prepares to begin a new year and wakes up to an entirely new world. Or does it?

You go to bed on a Friday night with the holiday season inching to a close and wake up on Saturday morning and your country is running Venezuela after invading it and kidnapping its president and his wife. Or so the narrative on Sunday morning goes. I’m sure it will change by the time we get to midweek. Yeah, it was that kind of weekend and that will be reflected in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading along with a host of other topics.

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I’ll lead off with a few in the moment takes on what happened in Venezuela yesterday. Note that in the moment takes often fade once the moment has its moment.

First up, David Frum says that Trump’s Critics Are Falling Into An Obvious Trap. Frankly, whether you’re a critic or a MAGA hat wearing supporter we’ve all fallen for so many obvious traps, what’s one more?

Thinking bigger picture, Tom Nichols thinks Maybe Russia and China Should Sit This One Out. They need to stop laughing first.

In the wake of the news, Carole Cadwalladr sees “a mass propaganda event” about to engulf the US in her piece, The Threat From America. She’s correct.

Written before the events of this weekend, Mathew Walther’s The Strange Death of Make America Great Again may seem out of place and time as it focuses on the MAGA culture wars within itself. I would venture that it is not, so stay tuned.

Turning to more local concerns that resonate alongside the global news, the folks at Block Club Chicago including Francia Garcia Hernádez and Madison Savedra have an excellent look at How Operation Midway Blitz Changed Our City in Chicago Under Siege.

As if not to be left out of the making bad news moment, Elon Musk’s back in the swing of things with his AI tool Grok allowing users to essentially turn X into a porn machine using photos of real folks to wreak havoc. Just note that X is still the social media platform of choice for far too many. Matteo Wong has the story in Elon Musk’s Pornography Machine.

Cory Doctorow published the text of a recent speech called A Post-American, Enshittification-Resistant Internet. He continues fighting the good fight like Sisyphus with that boulder.

JA Westenberg makes The Case For Blogging In The Ruins.

And to close out the week when holiday close out sales come to an end, Jake Lundberg takes a look at The Cult of Costco. Great piece whether you shop there or not.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Well That Happened

U.S Invades Venezuela and kidnaps president and his wife

Invading another country and kidnapping its president and his wife is certainly one way to distract from all of the many reasons the Trump regime needs to distract us from. Given that today, January 3rd is the statutory deadline to release the Epstein files, and we now have available the long transcript and video of Jack Smith’s deposition stating that the special prosecutor had irrefutable evidence that Trump was guilty it’s enough to spur suspicions in a stone.  It’s also not a great way to bring the holidays to an easy end. But then nothing about beginnings and endings have been easy for far too long.

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If you haven’t heard the news about the U.S. invasion of Venezuela be grateful for summaries. I won’t regurgitate beyond the opening paragraph of this blog post. I will say that the one piece of news in what passed for a press conference, the President of the United States says we’re now going to be running Venezuela. Watching a team that can’t run its own country say it’s going to run another strikes me as ironic, but then irony rusts in revolt at the doings of this bunch of dolts.

We’ve been on a wild ride for almost a year with the Trump regime and this will undoubtedly make it even wilder in the days ahead. I don’t believe anyone, including those in the administration, knows what it all means going forward. But we’re about to find out. Like it or not. I’m guessing we won’t like it.

The only silver lining I can possibly see is that taking these actions might possibly lead to the beginning of the end of this corrupt regime run by a child molester and convicted rapist. America historically has never been good at foreign conquest and overthrowing other governments, even when taking down corrupt evil regimes. Those past attempts have at least been undertaken with reasonably intelligent adults doing the planning and the work. That’s certainly not the case with this cast of characters acting in this Made for TV tragi-comedy.

If you listened, take anything you heard from the press conference with a grain of salt. Just like most things with this group it’s all poorly supported improv. Already the vice president of Venezuela who the Trump regime says we’re going to be working with and was gracious in her conversations is already demanding the U.S return Maduro.

Good luck to us all.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.