My Guess as to What Venezuelan Oil Means to the USA

[Charles West]

Did Trump wake up one day, look at a map, and throw darts at which countries to bomb, attack, and meddle with?
From peace on day one to an international war monger.
Venezuela, then Iran, then Somalia, then take Greenland, and if things get dull, send the National Guard into an American city and hope for the inevitable conflict.

The weird part about Trump and MAGA is that they were not just sore losers back in 2020 when they had a four-year tantrum about election results.

They are sore winners. They won and have as close to absolute power as any admin in America can get. They dismantled woke. They're deporting at warp speed. Fired large swatches of govt workes. Yet it is not enough. They have to keep riling up anger and want to incite endless hate and division. And now it is playing out in attacking sovereign nations and risking retaliation.

Where will it lead? I do not see it benefiting our nation.

By all means, let's stand idly by and allow China to become an unwelcome economic and political influence in the Americas. And heaven forbid we question the left's unilateral open border policy, to do so would hamper their ability to solely maintain political influence where they otherwise wouldn't. And why question the wisdom of losing $500 to $600 billion we borrow annually to waste, fraud, and institutionalized inefficiencies when worshiping the warm embrace of mother government is vastly more of a priority?

 

[George Hatch]

Alex Jones is not just another talking head. I can not recall anyone else (except a few other deranged RW pundits ). I do not recall anyone on cable or the NYT encouraging their audience to send death threats and send hate mail to taunt the parents of dead school children.

This is fake. What aboutism shirk responsibility. If you back haters, own it. Or differences among people like Jones and normal conservative pundits with ethics, such as Joe Reagan.

ICE and LOE are trained to deal with difficult people or people resisting/obstrucing. That's their job descritponm But this agent used deadly force for no reason, since his life or the lives of others were not in danger

Even if you were 100% right about the whataboutacism and could equate a podcaster with the elected politicians as having the same level of social responsibility, it doesn't alter the application. Most non-viewers never got sufficiently outraged about Jones' commentary on lizard people or vaxx or whatever other conspiracy talk, either. They just ignored him.

As for how LEs are trained you have no exposure or training or experience. Most people don't. You saw the vid and comments I posted earlier this morning, right? How about you reply to that clip and we discuss the specifics thereof on it's own merits?

Bring a lunch if you do because I'm already 3 steps ahead of you on that discussion.

 

[J Grant]

By all means, let's stand idly by and allow China to become an unwelcome economic and political influence in the Americas. And heaven forbid we question the left's unilateral open border policy, to do so would hamper their ability to solely maintain political influence where they otherwise wouldn't. And why question the wisdom of losing $500 to $600 billion we borrow annually to waste, fraud, and institutionalized inefficiencies when worshiping the warm embrace of mother government is vastly more of a priority?

There is no proof that there is $600 billion in domestic fraud. DOGE found only a fraction of the alleged fraud, btw.
That said, I support uncovering and rooting out fraud from any side of the aisle.

Moving on, if Biden had struck Venezuela, you would have been screaming. I do not believe you are capable of looking at an action without a hyperpartisan view.

That said, the benefit from Venezuela might be staving off some Russian or Chinese influence in the hemisphere. Though Trump just gave up our advanced AI chips (Nvidia) to the Chinese, which they can use in their military, and he coddles Putin , which makes his actions are inconsistent.

 

[J Grant]

Even if you were 100% right about the whataboutacism and could equate a podcaster with the elected politicians as having the same level of social responsibility, it doesn't alter the application. Most non-viewers never got sufficiently outraged about Jones' commentary on lizard people or vaxx or whatever other conspiracy talk, either. They just ignored him.

As for how LEs are trained you have no exposure or training or experience. Most people don't. You saw the vid and comments I posted earlier this morning, right? How about you reply to that clip and we discuss the specifics thereof on it's own merits?

Bring a lunch if you do because I'm already 3 steps ahead of you on that discussion.

I did not see them - which thread topic are they on?

ICE is not LOE /the police. They are not supposed to be stopping traffic and interfering with American citizens. They are there to arrest and take into custody illegals. Even if he stepped outside his duties and felt her car needed to be searched, he used deadly force when neither his life nor the lives of anyone around were in danger. She was not armed, her SUV was very slowly pulling away from a parked position, and her front wheels were turned away from him.

I read that her partner/wife was agitating and yelling provocations? That stinks, but dealing with that is part of the job description. If ICE or LOE do not want to deal with belligerent people acting out, they should be a clerk in a store or be a security guard patrolling a middle-class housing development ( we have plenty of them here ). They still might get harassed, but at a much lower level.

 

[George Hatch]

Personally I think seizing oil tankers and "arresting" non-citizens in their own country and talking about owning or controlling anything in Venezuela are all bad decisions. Same with the agitation on Greenland. I have no clue on what other information this admin might be acting on, but on the face of it I think it might have been more practical to just let the Venezuelans to run buck wyld.

I'm 50/50 on blasting smugglers out of the water (after repeated warnings) without a trial but I can kinda see the case that their conduct amounts to a clear and present danger to our citizens.

 

[Charles West]

There is no proof that there is $600 billion in domestic fraud. DOGE found only a fraction of the alleged fraud, btw.
That said, I support uncovering and rooting out fraud from any side of the aisle.

Moving on, if Biden had struck Venezuela, you would have been screaming. I do not believe you are capable of looking at an action without a hyperpartisan view.

That said, the benefit from Venezuela might be staving off some Russian or Chinese influence in the hemisphere. Though Trump just gave up our advanced AI chips (Nvidia) to the Chinese, which they can use in their military, and he coddles Putin , which makes his actions are inconsistent.

For pity sakes, the last couple of IG reports detailed the waste and the fraud and astounding inefficiencies. DOGE hasn't issued their report yet, but by all means, don't read that either, just go with your flow.

 

[George Hatch]

I did not see them - which thread topic are they on?

Post #638 in the Riot's thread, but I'll copy/paste here

Tim Pool commented on a vid that's apparently making the rounds right now.
Baltimore cop is facing down an uncontrolled driver from several feet away. In that moment the cop has no way to know that if the driver will or won't comply. No way to know what their intentions are.

In this case the driver chose to resist and flee. We can say she didn't intend to assault the cop, we can say she didn't intend to hurt the cop, we can say she didn't intend to commit a crime. But the actions are the actions.

The door slams at 11sec at which point the vehicle was still completely stopped.
The vehicle closes the distance and hits the cop at 12sec.

If it can happen that quickly from a standing stop then it can happen even more quickly when the vehicle is already in motion. The driver can start slow then speed up in an instant.

 

[George Hatch]

As for the legal authority of ICE agents, they stop, interview, search, pursue and arrest American citizens all the time. They don't enforce state law or make traffic stops for unsafe lane changes but they are law enforcement agents and are trained at the federal law enforcement training academies. They have powers of arrest - on duty or off duty - and their role goes far beyond that of the civilian security guards at your local shopping mall.

 

[J Grant]

As for the legal authority of ICE agents, they stop, interview, search, pursue and arrest American citizens all the time. They don't enforce state law or make traffic stops for unsafe lane changes but they are law enforcement agents and are trained at the federal law enforcement training academies. They have powers of arrest - on duty or off duty - and their role goes far beyond that of the civilian security guards at your local shopping mall.

These videos imo do not show a threat wrt Renee Good. No reason for them to have shown the first Baltimore video, but it was just a snippet. And half the people speaking on the video say that ICE was wrong!

ICE is not the police, and they have different obligations. But the result is an American citizen who was not a criminal is dead because of a poor decision on this agent's part. If he had PTSD from a prior incident, he should have been given paid time off/put on desk duty.

Trump incites poor decisions with his screaming about leftist lunatics and his vision of dystopian violence. The woman was a mother, and was dead for a minute when he and VP Pence and Noem smeared her. I know you don't care about how we look to the world, but for a POTUS to smear a dead woman the day of -even in grade school, bullies are looked down on.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

ut this agent used deadly force for no reason, since his life or the lives of others were not in danger

That's just your opinion, not fact.

There is no proof that there is $600 billion in domestic fraud.