Welcome to the first Back To Work Day of the year: it’s January 5, 2026, and National Bird Day. So here’s a beautiful Crimson Rosella (Platycercus elegans) from reader Scott Ritchie of Cairns Australia:
It’s also George Washington Carver Day (he died on this day in 1943), National Keto Day, and, better, National Whipped Cream Day.
You may remember Carver’s work developing new uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes, which made him famous. But he did much more than that, including furthering agricultural education and popularizing science . Here he is in the lab, though he shouldn’t be using his mouth with chemicals!
Apparently readers’ cats don’t conform to the new scientific report showing that cats generally sleep on their left sides. The poll (with disappointingly small participation):
I have heard from other readers as well, and so far the anecdotal evidence i have for cats sleeping mostly on their left sides (2/3 of them, according to the paper) is nil. I should do my own study!
Speaking of cats, Matthew just sent me this video of a man (apparently a soldier who’s been assigned elsewhere) greeting his cat upon coming home. WARNING: Loud screeching!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 5 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*If wishes were horses, I would ride a horse into Venezuela and conduct monitored democratic elections as soon as possible. Trump saying the we’re going to take over and run Venezuela is a statement that distresses me. We got rid of Maduro, now let the Venezuelans enact their own democracy. Sadly, Trump seems to be courting dubious characters in the Maduro regime, notably Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who was part of that corrupt regime. Venezuela already has a good candidate, Nobel Peace Laureate María Corina Machado, who was forbidden to run because she would have won. But Trump doesn’t like her, and so we won’t back her. Alternatively, Edmundo Gonzalez, allied with Machado, may have actually won the last election. But who gives a rat’s patootie about who Trump likes: Venezuela’s future should be in the hands of Venezuela, with perhaps the exception that new elections should be monitored by international observers.
Yesterday’s NYT singles out the problem with the U.S. “running” Venezuela:
President Trump’s declaration on Saturday that the United States planned to “run” Venezuela for an unspecified period, issuing orders to its government and exploiting its vast oil reserves, plunged the United States into a risky new era in which it will seek economic and political dominance over a nation of roughly 30 million people.
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago private club just hours after Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, and his wife were seized from their bedroom by U.S. forces, Mr. Trump told reporters that Delcy Rodríguez, who served as Mr. Maduro’s vice president, would hold power in Venezuela as long as she “does what we want.”
Ms. Rodríguez, however, showed little public interest in doing the Americans’ bidding. In a national address, she accused Washington of invading her country under false pretenses and asserted that Mr. Maduro was still Venezuela’s head of state. “What is being done to Venezuela is a barbarity,” she said.
Mr. Trump and his top national security advisers carefully avoided describing their plans for Venezuela as an occupation, akin to what the United States did after defeating Japan, or toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Instead, they vaguely sketched out an arrangement similar to a guardianship: The United States will provide a vision for how Venezuela should be run and will expect the interim government to carry that out in a transition period, under the threat of further military intervention.
Even after Ms. Rodríguez contradicted Mr. Trump, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, said he was withholding judgment.
“We’re going to make decisions based on their actions and their deeds in the days and weeks to come,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “We think they’re going to have some unique and historic opportunities to do a great service for the country, and we hope that they’ll accept that opportunity.”
Mr. Trump suggested on Saturday that while there were no American troops on the ground now, there would be a “second wave” of military action if the United States ran into resistance, either on the ground or from Venezuelan government officials.
It’s time to plan elections, allowing a reasonable time period for campaigning, and then get the hell out of Venezuela. Rodriguez is a bad actor and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t win, but if, in a fair and monitored election, she did, well, that would be the doing of the Venezuelan people. But who runs the railroad in the meantime? Good question, but I”d prefer Machado or Gonzalez over Rodriguez.
*The WSJ emphasizes this too, in a piece called “Venezuela’s new leader is a hardline socialist like Maduro.”
Venezuela’s new leader is a socialist true believer who helped Nicolás Maduro maintain his grip on power for more than a decade as the country’s economy crumbled.
Now, President Trump is counting on leftist Delcy Rodríguez—Maduro’s vice president who became the country’s de facto leader on Saturday—to work with the U.S. as it, in Trump’s words, begins to run Venezuela.
In doing so, he is leaving Maduro’s regime intact and choosing one of the deposed leader’s confidants over Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader and right-wing supporter of Trump.
At his news conference Saturday, Trump said that Rodríguez had a long conversation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump said that as Venezuela’s new de facto leader, she agreed to do whatever the U.S. needed done.
“She, I think, was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice,” Trump said. “She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple.”
Hours after Trump’s news conference, Rodríguez took a radically different tone, slamming the U.S. for its attack on Venezuelan military facilities as special forces soldiers snatched Maduro and swept him off to the U.S. She demanded the U.S. return Maduro, calling him Venezuela’s rightful president.
“Never again will we be slaves, never again will we be a colony of any empire,” she said, flanked by senior officials from Maduro’s government. “We’re ready to defend Venezuela.”
The fate of the Maduro regime’s remnants now lies in which path Rodríguez takes—the way of defiance against Trump, or working with his administration to stay in power.
Rodríguez, a 56-year-old lawyer by training, has been described by former colleagues and U.S. officials as a ruthlessly ambitious and Machiavellian political operative. For the last decade, she has held a number of key positions as she climbed her way to the top of Maduro’s authoritarian regime.
She worked hand-in-glove with her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, a trained psychiatrist who now presides over Venezuela’s Congress. Both are considered to be among Maduro’s most loyal lieutenants.
“They are very, very manipulative,” said Andrés Izarra, a former minister under Maduro who now lives in exile after breaking with the regime. “I think they will maneuver to stay in power as long as they can.”
It is bad news for Venezuela’s opposition leader, Machado, who has been a strong supporter of the Trump administration’s campaign against Maduro. Machado had hoped that Maduro’s downfall would usher the opposition into power. But on Saturday, Trump said that while Machado is a “very nice woman,” she doesn’t have the support or respect inside Venezuela to govern.
Trump, slowly but surely, is replacing one dictator with another, and marginalizing Machado. Trump is an idiot. Former security advisor Eliott Abrams has an article in the Free Press called, “Mr. President: Let the Venezuelan people run Venezuela“, and I’ll give on excerpt:
But now what? Again, the answer should be easy: The United States should be backing Venezuela’s democratic parties. They united last year under María Corina Machado as their candidate for president, and she would have won the election. When Maduro barred her from running, they united under retired career diplomat Edmundo González as a substitute candidate. Though he was almost unknown in Venezuela, he won a huge landslide because Machado backed him, and because he represented a return to democracy. The unity and effectiveness of the opposition last year were remarkable as it fought an election under the worst circumstances—with the danger of arrest, exile, or worse constantly present, with rallies broken up violently, with no access to state media. Its victory is both a tribute to the opposition leadership and a measure of what Venezuelans want.
But President Trump seems much more concerned with Venezuelan oil than Venezuelan democracy. In his press conference he went out of his way to belittle Machado, stating that she lacked the necessary “respect” from Venezuelans to govern. There is simply no basis for that judgment (or prejudice) given the election results, her courage in remaining in hiding in Venezuela month after month, and now her receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Sounds good to me. In the meantime, I read in this morning’s news that Trump is making noises about invading GREENLAND. I thought he had given up on that stupid idea. That would be an invasion of Europe, and it could not stand.
*Over at the Free Press, writer Charles Lane is hard on Zohran Mamdani in an essay called “Things worth remembering: Orwell saw this coming“. I’m a sucker for all things Orwell, so here are some excerpts. He’s discussing Orwell’s book The Road to Wigan Pier, in which Orwell lived among impoverished British coal miners and gave a horrifying view of their lives:
This humbling encounter with the actual working class, as opposed to the abstract one of socialist theory, inspired Orwell to reflect on the cultural gap between workers and the progressives who claim to speak for them. Though a committed socialist, he was compelled to train his formidable polemical powers on fellow leftists. This section of The Road to Wigan Pier makes the book unforgettable—and uncannily relevant to the era of Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani:
We have reached a stage when the very word Socialism calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors, and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth-control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. Socialism, at least in this island, does not smell any longer of revolution and the overthrow of tyrants; it smells of crankishness, machine-worship, and the stupid cult of Russia. Unless you can remove that smell, and very rapidly, Fascism may win.
There’s no precise analogy between the British socialists of Orwell’s day and contemporary U.S. woke progressives. Yet it’s close: If you substitute “electric cars” for “aeroplanes,” “trans kids” for “birth control,” and “Free Palestine” for “the stupid cult of Russia,” Orwell could be writing about academics in the Bay Area or Mamdani’s fan base in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Substitute “MAGA” for “fascism” and the parallels are even clearer.
Writing in the era of the Popular Front—the no-enemies-on-the-left anti-fascist alliance of Stalinists and Democratic Socialists—Orwell was that rare progressive intellectual willing to admit that his own side’s cultural cluelessness was driving workers into the far right’s arms.
. . .What workers really want, Orwell argued, is “present society with the worst abuses left out, and with interest centering round the same things as at present—family life, the pub, football, and local politics.” Meanwhile, a typical socialist is “a prim little man with a white-collar job, and, above all . . . a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.”
It’s fair to say that George Orwell would have despised Zohran Mamdani. During the campaign, when he was not out stumping for a rent freeze, free bus rides, or decriminalizing “sex work,” New York’s new mayor could be found dining at Manhattan’s pricey Omen Azen. His 2025 wedding celebrations included a three-day bash at his family’s secure compound in Uganda. Yet today, many Democratic progressives have happily, eagerly anointed him as their new leader.
In hindsight, it seems, The Road to Wigan Pier’s plea for self-awareness on the left was destined to become a literary classic—but politically futile.
Mamdani is what one of my friends used to call his wife: a “Nieman-Marxist,” saying that she thinks to the left but shops to the right.
*While we’re bashing Mamdani (you may like him, and so be it), have a read at this peach at The Dispatch written by editor Jonah Goldberg: “Collectivism warmed over” (article archived here):
Dear Reader (including those of you still hung over from celebrating Public Domain Day),
“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” declared Zohran Mamdani in his inaugural address as mayor of New York City on Thursday.
To paraphrase Theodore White’s quip about Barry Goldwater, it was a real “My God, he’s going to govern as Zohran Mamdani!” moment.
For young people who barely know who Goldwater (never mind Theodore White) was, the reference is probably lost. The same historical ignorance probably explains why some were surprised by all the fuss over the word “collectivism.”
“Collectivism” and its sibling, “collectivization,” are trigger words for, well, people like me. In the academic and philosophical literature, “collectivism” is the blanket analytical term for certainly most and arguably all forms of totalitarian ideology.
. . .When I first heard Mamdani refer to the “warmth of collectivism,” I immediately thought of Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag: A History. In one scene, she describes how a slave-laborer fell in the snow from exhaustion. The other slaves—and they were slaves, owned by the state, as Chamberlin would put it—rushed to strip the fallen man’s clothes and belongings. The dying man’s last words were, “It’s so cold.”
Collectivization under Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” led to millions more Chinese famine deaths from 1959 to 1961—from a lowball estimate of 20 million to a high of 45 million.
Now, I don’t for a moment think Mamdani has anything like that in mind. Moreover, even if he did, nothing like that can be orchestrated from New York’s City Hall.
But here is what I do think is interesting and worrisome about his use of the term “collectivism.” I can only think of three possibilities for it: 1) Mamdani is ignorant of the term’s historically grounded connotation, 2) he knows it and doesn’t care, or 3) he knows it and does care.
Under the second and third options, he could be trying to reclaim the positive connotation of collectivism—a connotation it has not had for at least a century. Or he could be trying to troll people—like me—into attacking him and overreacting to a word his fans have no problem with.
I suppose there’s a fourth possibility. He has a bad speechwriter—or is one—and just made a stupid, lazy mistake. After all, he could have used “community,” “communal,” “solidarity,” “cooperation,” “shared sacrifice,” or some such treacle.
But this mistake is essentially no different than ignorance. That it didn’t stand out to him is a form of ignorance. After all, if the draft referred to the warmth of “Stalinism” or “National Socialism,” Mamdani would certainly have said, “Whoa, we can’t say that. Let’s talk about the ‘warmth of community’ instead.”
I don’t like the “collectivism” quote for precisely the same reasons as Goldberg, and it’s clear I’m not a fan of Mamdani, who, if he were a native-born American, would be moving upwards towards the Presidency, with the help of “progressive” Democrats who found “great joy” in Kamala Harris. The Democrats, it seems, have become unable to recognize a good candidate if it was put in front of them.
*I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the unrest in Iran is growing, and the regime may well be in danger. The bad news is that Trump is threatening to intervene if Iran attacks protestors, which it’s already doing. Again, we have an internal matter but with Trump is trying to Police the World. Ceiling Cat knows that I am firmly on the side of the Iranian protestors, but we can’t get involved in every country’s problems (Iran’s building nuclear weapons, however, is a different matter.) From NBC News:
Widespread protests have rocked Iran for nearly a week and led to increasing violent clashes with security forces, prompting President Donald Trump to threaten intervention if a crackdown continues.
The protests, which started with economic grievances by shopkeepers in Tehran and quickly spread to remote cities in provinces like Fars and Lorestan, where protesters chanted slogans against the ruling clerics, have raised pointed questions for the country’s leaders about how much support they really enjoy.
Ali Larijani, who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged Friday without providing evidence that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the escalating demonstrations. And Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said in a post on X that Trump’s threat of intervention makes U.S. bases in the region “legitimate targets.”
Indeed; Trump’s loose lips could lead to the unnecessary deaths of American soldiers. More:
In a post on Truth Social, Trump had said that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.” He did not specify what this would mean.
Iranian officials attempted to project a united front with ordinary citizens in June, when the Israeli military battered the country in a 12-day war, partly joined by the U.S. military. The war killed more than 1,000 people including top military leaders and nuclear scientists, according to state media, and wreaked havoc on its nuclear facilities.
On Monday, after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump issued a fresh threat to “knock the hell out of” Iran if the Islamic Republic attempts to rebuild its nuclear program or expand its ballistic missile program.
. . .It remains to be seen whether Trump’s threats of intervention will encourage the protesters or lead security forces to hold their fire.
“People could feel slightly more confident and emboldened thinking that the United States might actually be more than rhetorically supportive,” said Vakil of Chatham House. “But I worry that they might be disappointed, not understanding that the United States is very much focused on outcomes and interests that benefit the United States and not really benevolent towards the Iranian people.”
Still, whether the protests expand and continue or are crushed by force like similar protests in 2022 and 2023 — when approximately 500 people were killed and thousands were arrested — will largely depend on the will of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in the Islamic Republic, analysts say. He has not spoken publicly about the protests in the past week.
Somebody has to tell Trump to stop talking about kicking the butts of other countries. The problem is that the “President” has peopled his staff with toadies and sycophants who dare not say stuff like that.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej wisely answers a tough question from Hili:
Hili: What’s the way to the future?
Andrzej: Through the realm of random happenings.
Hili: And the signs?
Andrzej: Hunger, yearning, curiosity.
In Polish:
Hili: Którędy prowadzi droga do przyszłości?
Ja: Przez krainę przypadkowych zdarzeń.
Hili: A drogowskazy?
Ja: Głód, pożądanie, ciekawość.
*******************
From Give Me a Sign:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From The Language Nerds:
Masih’s back in action trying to help overthrow the Iranian government from afar:
Saghar Etemadi, a 22-year-old Iranian protester, was shot in the face with pellet bullets by security forces and later died in hospital.
She stood up for a free Iran.
The regime killed her.Her last Instagram message before protesting:
“I’m afraid we’ll lose many more of us,… pic.twitter.com/Z7L4YKUcIE
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 4, 2026
From Luana (translated from the Portuguese):
From Larry, the Number Ten Cat; a rescue of Ceiling Cat!
Happy #Caturdaypic.twitter.com/zkKkRE8D8g
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) January 3, 2026
From Malcolm; a lot of work for about two seconds of art. Still, it’s way cool:
She creates art using rice and then throws it in the air to create astounding images.
[📹 friedriceart]pic.twitter.com/1RjqRYKTPK
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 2, 2026
One from my feed. Watch the whole 22 seconds (I reposted it):
I hope this is real! Hard to tell these days. . . https://t.co/P1BUmSN4Xz
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 4, 2026
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death, along with her mother and brother, when they arrived in Auschwitz. She was six years old. https://t.co/5PzGmQORdP
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 5, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. First a lovely music/animation video; click on the screenshot to see it:
Why did they anonymize the sheep??? (See enlargement below.)
Ok. So. They anonymised the sheep.
— Angry People in Local Newspapers (@apiln.bsky.social) 2026-01-04T13:10:12.423Z
Da sheep:
From “Give Me a Sign”, it looks like Boss may have been AI. I hate AI.
I wouldn’t be so sure to cry “AI”. Do a Google image search first, like this one:
You’ll find other photos of the truck, too, like this one.
I am not saying for sure it’s real, but seriously, be a bit agnostic.
And AI is very useful in some cases, like DeepMind’s AlphaFold, which predicted the shapes of proteins. Do you hate that AI, too? Because then you’re hating something that led to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024.
I WAS agnostic…i said “may” have been.
I think that AlphaFold is a proper use of the neural network curve fitting technology. I just object to the sobriquet “artificial intelligence”.
I’m not agnostic. I hate AI.
Given that the article was dated 2014, I think that the pic of the oil truck must be real.
But unfortunately, the top comments on the video of the Siamese cat greeting the soldier – which I was sure was real – are all saying it is AI!
It is AI. These are apparently a ‘thing’ lately. There are collections of them, some pushing half an hour. All AI, as far as I can tell, all titled as real.
A few years ago, there was a genuine (as far as I know, genuine, at least) of a cat greeting a soldier returning from deployment that went viral. I’d guess, without any real supporting data, that may be the inspiration here.
The oil tanker is probably real. Both hivedetect.ai and wasitai.com give it the all clear. Dunno about the cat, though.
I tend to be skeptical that AI will solve more problems than it creates overall. But in my own life it made a world of difference: it helped me identify an extremely rare genetic condition that many years of specialist visits failed to uncover, which completely changed my life and treatment path, and has given me significant hope for a long and healthy life, both of which looked unimaginable over the last several years. One would think that would make me a techno-utopian, the things it can solve are amazing, but I also recognize the problem areas.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. -Umberto Eco, philosopher and novelist (5 Jan 1932-2016)
I 100% agree that the best outcome for the mess in Venezuela would be for the US to ensure a swift election campaign. I wonder why the name of Juan Guaidó (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Guaid%C3%B3) is not being discussed, but I guess that would be for Venezuelans to decide and not for outsiders to impose.
Reporter: Did you speak with the oil companies before the operation? Did you tip them off?
Trump: Before and after. They want to go in and they’re going to do a great job.
That’s all we need to know. The guy who tore down the East Wing of the White House without having followed established procedures or having a final plan in place has no plan for improving conditions in Venezuela unless it helps oil companies extract money from their oil reserves.
Even if that were correct, isn’t the removal of Maduro a net good-thing? Personally, I think it has more to do with the war on drugs, although I’ve seen suggestions that the Admin wants info on cartels paying off Dems.
If Trump removed Maduro based on drugs, then why did he pardon Juan Hernandez, the former president of Honduras? Hernandez was sentenced to 45 years in prison for using his position to help drug traffickers import more than 800,000 pounds of cocaine into the USA. Why did Trump pardon Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of distributing narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, and conspiring to create fake identities and launder money, and whose Silk Road site was the marketplace for drugs?
It’s a slippery slope, pretending to play the good cop for the world. The history of the USA is pretty bad in that regard, especially in Latin America. Who should we take out next? Putin? Kim Jong Un? Any number of other bad guys?
The drugs thing is totally pretextual. In any reading of our fight against drugs, Venezuela isn’t really a big producer. They send us a bit of (Columbian) cocaine but not enough for … this. And fentanyl is utterly absurd since the precursors are from Chay-Nah and mixed in Mexico – sent directly to the US.
That said, I’m not opposed to welcoming Maduro – a truly terrible man – into his new Brooklyn government housing.
The Hungarian translator story (Merry go round) amused me. Speaking in Japanese I’ve often groped for words only to find they use a (usually English) loan word! Learning to speak Japanese is a lifelong amusing torment.
D.A.
NYC
While Google Translate turns merry-go-round into its katakana equivalent (メリーゴーラウンド), as suggested by the story, my Casio EX-Word (which says it is using the 5th edition of Kenkyusha’s “shin wa ei dai jiten”) translates it as 回転木馬, loosely “rotating hobby-horse”. I haven’t checked my paper dictionaries.
AIUI, learning to speak Chay-Nese is significantly more difficult. (I strongly identify as Monolingual, but maybe I’m just lazy.)
It all depends on the follow up. If he replaces Maduro with a more ruthless and intelligent version, he has made things worse.
But at least that replacement won’t have his precious…
Yes, the word “collectivism” always make my skin crawl (and the euphemism “community” makes my antenae go up). It’s the opposite of individual rights.
In my experience there are two general types of humans: those who want to be part of a herd, and those who want the freedom to go their own way. The ones espousing collectivism are of the herd variety. They only feel themselves when part of a group or movement and cannot think independently. Which is why they so often fall prey to smooth-talking sociopaths like Mamdani.
I don’t see any probable future for fair elections in Venezuela. One bad actor is gone, but an authoritarian state set up over decades in still in place, with all its bad actors, including the military. Blockading oil shipments may lead to some bending to Trump’s wishes, but it wont lead to democracy.
” The good news is that the unrest in Iran is growing, and the regime may well be in danger. The bad news is that Trump is threatening to intervene if Iran attacks protestors, which it’s already doing.”
I think it would be great news if Trump intervenes in Iran, and long overdue. The Khamenei regime is several orders of magnitude more dangerous to the world than Venezuela.
Religious zealots scrambling to make nuclear bombs, who open their plenary sessions with “Death to the USA, Death to Israel”? Top instigator of terrorism in the world, who have oppressed their people for four decades? They have already attacked American bases and killed hundreds of Americans, C’mon!
And just like the Tweet that outlined how everything has already been tried with Maduro, we have tried everything with Iran. Now – right now – is the time to intervene and rescue the Iranian people and the Middle East from this scourge.
The woman my ex has been living with for past 20+ years is an Iranian refugee. She’s online constantly. She follows all the usual activists and talks to people remaining in the country. She told me that although she was personally happy we took out the nukes, the US bombing campaign caused many to unite againt the US and dampened the protests against the regime. Iranians haven’t forgotten what US meddling led to in the past. As has been said on WEIT many times, these things need to be done from within if they stand any chance of succeeding. Iranians’ love of the US is well known, but when bombs are falling the population loses its dignity.
“Shah-an-shah, Shah of Iran”
(with apologies to the Beach Boys and Fred Fassert).
AIUI, he too was working towards nukes, with US support, in the beforetime when Iran was a staunch ally. Really.
Oh but there very much is such a thing. Many Ukrainians soon deeply regretted their initial failure to be part of such a thing: “I’m against Stalin but I don’t support what Germany did.” (I’ve touted Vasiliĭ Grossman’s novel Stalingrad here at least once; now would be an appropriate time to read it.)
«Deja de engañarte»
Indeed, I feel that there are few tweets that will age more poorly than that “There’s no such thing as” tweet.
I oppose Maduro, and have long wanted to see him out of power, but I also oppose this US intervention, and feel that is really the only sensible position I could hold after Trump’s comments since. It seems far more likely than not that what Venezuelans will end up with is an authoritarian regime little different than the Maduro one (including most of the same people), with the main change being that it has reduced sovereignty over it’s own oil. While at the same time further normalization of great-power “spheres of influence” undoubtedly leave Russia and China celebrating.
The basic idea of the tweet is that the suffering is so extreme in Venezuela that normal rules no longer apply. However, the moment you abandon those rules, it is the weak who lose and the strong who win – every time.
After Maduro is convicted and sentenced, how much more will his pardon cost than Hernandez’?
HA! Grim but true Mr. Hempenstein!
However in this case I think Trump’s animosity towards Maduro means he won’t be bribed into a pardon. The only thing our president likes more than money is vengeance.
Trump doesn’t pardon his enemies, only “people who like Trump” or neutrals plus money.
best,
D.A.
NYC
DA, I am inclined to agree. Trump almost certainly won’t pardon Maduro.
What if Maduro agrees to testify how Venezuela rigged the 2020 U.S. presidential election?
Then that would mean that Donald Trump was really elected to his second term in 2020 and must now step down in what has turned out to be his unconstitutional third elected term. Remember, he can not be more than “twice elected”. If he was elected in 2020 but never got to serve (because his opponent was inaugurated fraudulently), the election still counts as his second win.
What’s more, JD Vance would become President immediately. This early in the term, he would be able to stand for election to the Presidency only once.
I worry that President Trump is starting to like the power that he has at his disposal. Venezuela, soon Cuba (He thinks that Cuba will fall in its own.), then (maybe) Iran and, of all places, Greenland. Having wielded military power over the past year with some success—e.g., Iran and now Venezuela—Trump is imagining more ways to use it. Scary.
It doesn’t seem like the administration had a good morning-after plan before snatching Maduro. They say that they are keeping the Vice President in power in order to stabilize things. If she turns out to be puppet enough for Trump, she’ll probably stay for a while. Yes. The U.S. needs a glide path for getting out of Venezuela and allowing the country to govern itself. I don’t see that emerging yet.
Toppling Maduro and installing his deputy, is like Truman and uncle Joe installing Hermann Goring as the interim leader of post-Nazi Germany.
It would have been far better if Gustavo Dudamel was made interim leader of Venezuela, advised by Viceroy Viscount Mountbatten of Venezuela, with Shakira as Dudamel’s deputy. ( Dudamel and Shakira look good on TV, hence they are qualified. Shakira is Colombian, but that’s close enough to Venezuela. She was in trouble for tax evasion, so we know she’s good with money.)
Ramesh 49% Oriental 49% Indian 2% human Denisovan
By what legal authority would Trump install a head of state in Venezuela? I’ve read many people who claim he has an obligation to do so, having removed the former head of state. But Maduro was not recognized as such by the US (under either Biden or Trump), by the EU, by Canada, and by dozens of other countries. Trump has remained within court-sanctioned precedent in removing Maduro as a law-enforcement action versus instituting “regime change” to install a puppet to our liking. While Trump’s “run Venezuela” comments blurred the lines, Secretary of State Rubio made clear this weekend that we will control the oil vessels via sanctions—again, court approved—to essentially coerce current Venezuelan leadership to take actions in the interest of the United States and Venezuela.
As to his comments about Machado, as always with Trump one needs to cut through his overstatement and lack of precision. I think the concern among Trump’s advisors is less whether Machado has broad support among the Venezuelan people as opposed to whether she has sufficient support within the military and other powerful institutions to govern effectively without being subverted and, eventually, ousted by Maduro supporters. It’s a legitimate concern—but one I would leave to the people of Venezuela.
“with Trump one needs to cut through his overstatement and lack of precision.”
One of the shiniest, best polished turds I’ve seen in awhile. “Overstatement”? “Lack of precision”? My goodness, Doug.
I rather like forms of words that don’t make me imagine the writer has sprayed spittle all over his computer screen as he was typing.
Just a reminder to the many who have been distracted over the oast week or so, tomorrow is January 6.
Re: the Japanese merry-go-round story. I love the “horse tornado for children” translation attempt. It reminded me of the literal Chinese translation for “aquarium” as “family water pavilion.”
There’s a lot of those cuties in East Asian languages. Like euthanasia is “Safe Happy Death.”
On Chinese v Japanese (Barbara Knox above), experts at the US Naval College say Japanese is harder for English speakers which is.. sorta true, grammar wise, but for Japanese you need 2,000 ish characters, Chinese is 5,000. The only Chinese I know is being able to read some of it via common characters – but I like to show off in Chinese restaurants to my friends by translating the menus though I don’t speak a word. 🙂
Derek’s (terminal) comment above amused me with his reference to Kenkyusha dictionary.
D.A.
NYC
“We Pray for MacArthur’s Erection” was a classic example of Engrish.
Re da sheep, maybe ovine facial eczema? 🙂
I’m back for seconds and hope it won’t take me over the acceptable percentage of today’s comments. I just read Jonah Goldberg’s article about Collectivism. Thank you, Jerry, for bringing it to our attention and for linking to the archived version. That’s some smart, clear writing! He covered the two things that most often come to my mind when I listen to this pampered Mamdani character: his ignorance and lack of humility. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard this guy tell us that he “won’t apologize” for something or other. I’m looking forward to this new source being included in future Hili’s. Everything I’ve ever read from The Dispatch has been great. How nice of that “kind reader” to gift you the subscription for your birthday. Lucky us!
P. S. While I’m here, I also think there is such a thing as being against Maduro and not supporting what the US did.
Perhaps Mr. Goldberg’s rhetorical and analytical gifts are due in part to the influence of his mother, the beneficent Lucianne Goldberg of Tripp-Lewinsky renown.
“Rodríguez . . . ruthlessly ambitious and Machiavellian political operative . . . ‘very, very manipulative . . . .’ ” (Sounds Trumpian to me.)
Perhaps it is to be regretted that pure-as-the-driven snow Heinz Kissinger (who referred to Vietnam as “a 4th-rate country,” a nominal improvement over Trump’s favorite linguistic descriptor) is not alive to learn a few things from her, or to recommend a successor Venezuelan Pinochet. Perhaps Rodriquez will learn a few things from Trump. (” . . . ignorance and lack of humility. . . won’t apologize . . . .”)
Perhaps the U.S. would not have overthrown Maduro had his political ideology sufficiently aligned with that of Trump-pardoned Hernandez of Honduras which, according to AI, “espouses right-wing ideologies including nationalism, conservatism, traditionalism, Christian democracy, and neoliberalism.”
It’s uncanny the traits shared by Mamdani and Trump. Two sides of the same coin.
Lots of serious comments about today’s topics, but I really must shine a light on one line in Jerry’s postings that made me laugh out loud: “Mamdani is what one of my friends used to call his wife: a “Nieman-Marxist,””
Thank you for reprinting that, Jerry. Made my day.