Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
VIEWED: 185382
PAGE 364 of 479
Mike Waltz, President Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador, was asked Thursday on Fox News about the administration’s plans for Venezuela. Trump recently authorized covert CIA operations against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and has publicly considered conducting land strikes on the country.
Waltz told Fox News that Maduro is an “illegitimate leader, convicted in the Southern District of New York,” adding that the U.S. will “do whatever it takes” to dismantle Venezuelan “terrorist gangs.”
Notably, Maduro was not convicted, but rather charged with narcoterrorism and other offenses, in New York’s Southern District in 2020. He has not been apprehended nor stood trial, and the Trump administration has a $50 million bounty out on information leading to his arrest. (Venezuela’s foreign minister at the time called the charges against Maduro “miserable, vulgar, and unfounded,” and consistent with a U.S. “policy of forced regime change in Venezuela.”)
And of course, if a conviction in New York is such a stigma, as Waltz suggests, then Trump is in deep trouble. Trump became the first felonious president in May 2024, convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records by a New York State Supreme Court jury—whose verdict he is appealing.
Waltz, a congressman at the time, cried election interference.
https://newrepublic.com/post/201875/trump-waltz-world-leader-maduro-co
nvicted-new-york-illegitimate
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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You keep cheerleading for the bad guys and see what happens to you. 
CNN's Enten: Odds Of Dems Taking The House "Have Gone Plummeting Down," Much Closer To A Toss-Up At This Point
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/10/15/cnns_enten_odds_of_
dems_taking_the_house_have_gone_plummeting_down_much_closer_to_a_toss-up_at_this_point.html
That's not even considering that SCOTUS is going to reverse all of the blue state racial gerrymandering in June, the fact that we're removing illegals off of the census for house seats, we're removing mail-in ballots, we're removing ballot harvesting, we're removing drop boxes, and we're going to require voter ID.
Once all of the cheating has been removed from the election process, Democrats will never gain control of the house again.
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For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Most of what Trump says or posts is cringeworthy and some of it is downright grotesque.
It seems to me that Trump can't wrap his brain around the idea that being President of the USA does NOT make him Master of the Universe. It looks like he keeps trying for leverage on China and Russia, and can't figure out that while he can bully and/or bribe Qatar or Israel or France or Venezuela, it's not going to work on the other big powers.
It seems to me you can’t either. First, he could end Russian aggression in a week. He doesn’t because Putin has something on him, and or, he doesn’t think it benefits him personally. You have yet to figure out Trumps motivations and that’s sad. Or you're being dishonest.
And he didn’t bribe Qatar, they bribed him. Why did he crack down on Israel? They bombed his business partners, Qatar. I see no references in your posts expressing how he is acting like a dictator and destroying American institutions. Which shows your ignorance and biases regarding all matters, here and abroad. Isn’t that right comrade?
You are on board with the Alex Krainer's of the world. He likes dictators like Putin and believes Putin being a strong man benefits the masses. You think the same. Which is why you always come off as a Russian troll who never gets, how and why America is what it is and the promise only it offers. And, it's why you are all in for tearing it down.
T
Trump’s Qatar military deal is historic — for all the wrong reasons
Qatar’s ruling family may have just found out how much influence a run-down Boeing 747 buys you in Donald Trump’s America.
In a scenario that would have dominated the headlines in any other administration, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week that Qatar’s Air Force would be moving into a plush new “military facility” at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. Yes, the same Qatar that Trump once accused of funding global terrorism. What a difference an airplane makes!
The president’s new love affair with Qatar is flying under the radar, it seems, thanks to a constant stream of fresh political scandals closer to home. But this new coziness with Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is causing turbulence with everyone from top military brass to Trump’s closest Capitol Hill allies. If Democrats want voters to treat this like the national security crisis it is, they’ll need to get a lot more comfortable explaining why Qatar isn’t our friend.
The Qatari government apparently knows that when it comes to Trump’s ego, the sky is the limit. When the regime offered the White House a “free” Boeing superluxury jumbo jet (estimated value $400 million), Trump was quick to accept it as a show of respect, even though doing so put American taxpayers on the hook for nearly $1 billion in repairs and security refits. As Trump said at the time, only “a stupid person” would turn down a free airplane. But even setting aside the exorbitant taxpayer-funded upgrade costs, Qatar’s 747-800 now looks anything but free.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-qatar-military-deal-is
-historic-for-all-the-wrong-reasons/ar-AA1OCOOl?ocid=msedgntp&pc=EDBBAN&cvid=a5034daee3f64658b4b76105d0b5a6f1&ei=32
You never speak of any of this because your agenda is Anti-American comrade. Trump is a Putin ally. That may change but so far, Trump has been a Russian stooge. If this were Biden, wow, you'd be yelling it from the roof tops. Even Bidens son was a favorite target of yours for what may have amounted to a few million; may have. With Trump and his sons, it's billions, and nothing but silence from you.
Who the fuck do you think you're kidding?
T
&l
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Most of what Trump says or posts is cringeworthy and some of it is downright grotesque.
It seems to me that Trump can't wrap his brain around the idea that being President of the USA does NOT make him Master of the Universe. It looks like he keeps trying for leverage on China and Russia, and can't figure out that while he can bully and/or bribe Qatar or Israel or France or Venezuela, it's not going to work on the other big powers.
THGR:
It seems to me you can’t either. First, he could end Russian aggression in a week.
If Trump could, then so could Biden*.
So why didn't Biden*?
I bet you never answer that question!
Quote:
He doesn’t because Putin has something on him, and or, he doesn’t think it benefits him personally.
I see Q-anon's representative is posting.
Again.
Quote:Glad he cracked down on Israel.It's nothing but trouble and we should dump them altogether.
THGR:
And he didn’t bribe Qatar, they bribed him. Why did he crack down on Israel? They bombed his business partners, Qatar.
Quote:The institution that counts is the Constitution. Everything else is a growth on that fundamental document, and not necessarily a good one.
THGR: I see no references in your posts expressing how he is acting like a dictator and destroying American institutions. Which shows your ignorance and biases regarding all matters, here and abroad. Isn’t that right comrade?
Quote:
You are on board with the Alex Krainer's of the world. He likes dictators like Putin and believes Putin being a strong man benefits the masses. You think the same. Which is why you always come off as a Russian troll who never gets, how and why America is what it is and the promise only it offers. And, it's why you are all in for tearing it down.
Alex said something interesting. He grew up in Communist Croatia, but came here as a foreign exchange student when he was 17. When he got here, everyone said "So aren't you happy living in a free country?“ or words to that effect. And what he said was that people ASSUMED we were free with only one frame of reference, without anything for comparison. But he felt freer in Croatia.
An additional point that Glenn made was something along the lines of "virtue by identity" ... you ASSUME you're virtuous, or free, or civilized, or advanced, not because of what you do but bc of who you are (American, in this case).
Also, quotes from de Tocqueville about democracy.
It was an interesting conversation, which I'll try to find for you.
Quote:
Trump’s Qatar military deal is historic — for all the wrong reasons
For a while Saudi Arabia and Qatar were competing to see who could find their preferred faction of head chopping jihadi extremists who were, strangely, our proxies in our "wars“ against Assad and Qaddafi and Putin.
Now that Assad and Qaddafi are out of the way, are they done with the head chopping stuff?
We've been buying their oil and gas for decades. I can understand that. But we really REALLY should be more careful who we partner with! So, no, I'm not a big fan of buddying up with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the "mujahideen", and our many other unsavory proxies.
Quote:I've posted MANY times about that, stupid. Something's wrong with you.
You never speak of any of this because your agenda is Anti-American comrade.
Quote:
Trump is a Putin ally.
One of us is confused. I thought he was a Qatari ally!
Quote:
blah blah blah ...
Just consider this a friendly gesture ...
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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What Won’t Congress Let Trump Get Away With?
The president’s Caribbean boat strikes are setting a dangerous new precedent.
By Conor Friedersdorf | October 17, 2025, 9:30 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/boat-strikes-trump-v
enezuela/684583/
On President Donald Trump’s orders, the U.S. military last month began carrying out a series of strikes in the Caribbean, blowing up boats suspected of moving drugs and killing a total of at least 27 people so far. (Multiple news outlets reported that a strike yesterday was believed to be the first one to leave survivors.) Although Trump has called the dead “narcoterrorists,” his administration has not provided good evidence to support that characterization. Even pundits who defended extrajudicial killings during the War on Terror years—including Lawfare’s Ben Wittes, National Review’s Andy McCarthy, and John Yoo, the author of the so-called torture memos—have deemed these strikes illegal or legally suspect.
Yet the American people don’t seem particularly concerned. A recent Harris survey found that 71 percent of registered voters support “destroying boats bringing drugs into the United States,” and the strikes have prompted little public outcry. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama meted out death without due process even outside the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, inuring Americans to the practice. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that the Obama administration carried out 563 strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, killing 384 to 807 civilians, in addition to militants. If, as Trump repeatedly asserts, “narcoterrorists” from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua pose a threat to national security, simply killing them without due process might seem to many casual observers like continuity. This is what the United States did to men like Ayman al-Zawahiri. Why not do it to men like Pablo Escobar?
That thinking is dangerous. To kill needlessly, when you could easily detain and prosecute, is morally wrong. Ongoing lethal strikes will inflict carnage on innocents. It will also sow hatred of the United States in our hemisphere as surely as War on Terror drone strikes did in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. And if Americans become desensitized to these killings as a routine tactic in the War on Drugs, the threat to civil liberties at home and abroad is profound. Drug trafficking is endemic, and will always be endemic, in free societies. Every plane in the sky, every boat in the ocean, and every truck on the highway could plausibly be smuggling drugs on behalf of a dangerous cartel. If the president is permitted to blow up modes of transport on his suspicion of drug running alone, and without having to provide proof even after the fact about the identity of the people he killed, the War on Drugs will have rendered the Bill of Rights void. No one will be safe from a president’s dictatorial power to kill without evidence, arrest, or trial.
Trump is almost certainly misleading the public about whom he is killing. There has been no definitive accounting of the identity or even the nationality of the people who have been struck. (“Evidence suggests that the last boat bombed was Colombian with Colombian citizens,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on social media last week.) But drug boats are most often driven by impoverished fishermen, not dangerous drug kingpins, three Ohio State University professors found in a May 2025 analysis of federal punishments handed out to the hundreds of people arrested each year for transporting drugs by boat. A typical crew might include a fisherman recruited for knowledge of the ocean, a mechanic, and an unskilled laborer, and only rarely are they armed. Many are motivated by “economic desperation,” the professors write, or describe “being forced to join smuggling crews” under threat. Trump wants the public to believe that his lethal new tactic will eliminate dangerous knights in a geopolitical chess game against drug cartels. But the tactic is likelier to kill
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Most of what Trump says or posts is cringeworthy and some of it is downright grotesque.
It seems to me that Trump can't wrap his brain around the idea that being President of the USA does NOT make him Master of the Universe. It looks like he keeps trying for leverage on China and Russia, and can't figure out that while he can bully and/or bribe Qatar or Israel or France or Venezuela, it's not going to work on the other big powers.
THGR:
It seems to me you can’t either. First, he could end Russian aggression in a week.
If Trump could, then so could Biden*.
So why didn't Biden*?
I bet you never answer that question!
----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What Won’t Congress Let Reagan/ Clinton/ Bush/ Obama Get Away With?
The president’s strikes are setting a dangerous new precedent.
By Conor Friedersdorf | October 17, 2025, 9:30 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/boat-strikes-trump-v
enezuela/684583/
Regime changes, attempted and/or completed, in my lifetime alone:
Cuba
Guatemala
Congo
Indonesia
Grenada
Nicaragua
Chile
Yugoslavia
Panama
Afghanistan
Iraq
Libya
Syria
Georgia
Ukraine
I'm sure I missed a few. Ironically, this is under the "winds of change" title when, in fact, it's just more of the same. I was hoping for something different.
Quote:
And if Trump is, in fact, pursuing regime change in Venezuela, he is doing it in a way that subverts the Constitution, which vests Congress with the power to declare war, even when a foreign regime is as appalling and abusive as the one that holds power in Venezuela. The precedent that Trump is setting threatens the rule of law and everyone’s rights.
The precedent that TRUMP is setting???
Congress has been either MIA or actively supporting our regime changes abroad since at least 1900. No wonder Congress has such a low approval rating.
But .... why are you making a big issue of it NOW??? Just because, yanno, TRUMP?
Jeez, SECOND. The people you quote are dumber than rocks. And you are too, since you quote them so often!
For the record, I'm against ANY of our regime changes/ foreign interference abroad, whether by Trump or any Republican, or Biden* or any Democrat.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:You are for regime change if Putin does it.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
For the record, I'm against ANY of our regime changes/ foreign interference abroad, whether by Trump or any Republican, or Biden* or any Democrat.
. . . And once the meeting was over, the stories came out about just how destructive it had been. First, Trump went public to say no new weapons for Ukraine, instead it was time for Ukraine to sacrifice its own territory to appease Putin.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine was very interesting, and cordial, but I told him, as I likewise strongly suggested to President Putin, that it is time to stop the killing, and make a DEAL! Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts. They should stop where they are. Let both claim Victory, let History decide! No more shooting, no more Death, no more vast and unsustainable sums of money spent. This is a War that would have never started if I were President. Thousands of people being slaughtered each and every week — NO MORE, GO HOME TO YOUR FAMILIES IN PEACE!
Oct 17, 2025, 9:46 PM
So the official position of the US is now “blood makes borders”. Good to know.
For the Ukrainians this was terribly deflating. Indeed, the more the details came out about the meeting and Trump’s earlier phone calls with Putin, the more terrible it seemed. One report was that far from saying he would be happy with the line freezing where it is, Putin actually asked for the cessation of more Ukrainian territory before he would agree to a deal. Amazingly, it seems that people around Trump immediately started amplifying Kremlin demands, using Russian talking points. Other stories said that the meeting with Trump and Zelensky became emotional, as Trump dropped the hammer on the Ukrainians.
And at the end—people are still speculating whether in the end Trump might send Ukraine Tomahawks. Please end this charade now.
No More, Please!
I bet in about three months, the media and analytical community will go on a breathless splurge, speculating about whether Trump might actually give Ukraine nuclear weapons. They will report about how frustrated Trump is with Putin for not ending the war, how this time its different, and how Trump is poised to make Russia pay by giving Ukraine nuclear weapons. Seriously, we will be told, even though Trump has made such threats countless times before and never followed through, this time it will be different.
Of course its not and he won’t.
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-155-no-more-plea
se
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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This year, hundreds of Venezuelans were quietly disappeared from ICE custody into El Salvador’s massive CECOT prison, a facility known internationally for torture and incommunicado confinement. No charges. No courts. No transparency. That is the textbook definition of enforced disappearance.
And Americans, by and large, are looking away.
History has seen this before. In 1933, long before Hitler launched the extermination camps, the Nazis established hundreds of smaller detention camps scattered across Germany. They called it “protective custody.” It sounded bureaucratic, even benign.
But what it meant was the creation of a parallel system where anyone could be taken, indefinitely, outside the reach of the courts.
At first it was communists and social democrats, then Jews and “asocials,” and eventually anyone who got in the regime’s way. People disappeared into those camps, and good Germans told themselves it wasn’t their business, that “the state must have its reasons.”
By the time they realized what they had normalized, it was too late.
That is the exact pattern we see unfolding here today. Trump’s enforcers don’t call it Schutzhaft. They call it “civil detention.”
And ICE has a $45 billion budget to build hundreds of these “ detention centers” all across America. Do you really think they’re just gonna stop at Brown people?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-finally-say-the-qu
iet-part-out-loud-literally-opinion/ar-AA1OIloA
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You are for regime change if Putin does it.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
For the record, I'm against ANY of our regime changes/ foreign interference abroad, whether by Trump or any Republican, or Biden* or any Democrat.
Don't tell us that you forgot "Fuck the EU" Nuland picking out Ukraine's new regime after we toppled the old one?
So, that's one regime change.
You were all for that.
Then we armed our new regime and set it against Russia to "decolonize" it and take its resources.
ANOTHER regime change you were all for.
I should have included Russia in my list of attempted and/or successful regime changes. Thanks for the reminder!
PS: Your pearl-clutching faux outrage is pathetic. As is your faux hysteria about deporting "brown people".
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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