The way we will know whether the administration is serious about Venezuela is based on whether they involve María Corina Machado in the proposed regime change.

Every country with an authoritarian regime has a real opposition and a fake opposition. The fake opposition has no interest in coming to power. It wants to collect grants, prizes and awards for bravely standing against the regime in words but not in deeds.

Machado is fake opposition. Trying to whip her up into anything workable will be a complete waste of time. If the administration doesn’t know that, then they are not serious.

People should stop using the expression “international law.” There is no law without institutions that can enforce it. Can anybody name the institution that can enforce international law? Obviously not.

A lot of time and energy are wasted on demonstrations of outrage over meaningless expressions. On par with “human rights”, this is one of them.

The prosecution is seeking 4 years prison time for a single 43-year-old man from Amsterdam who sexually abused a 3-year-old girl whom he had purchased for $100,000 via a US surrogacy agency.

Anyone with money can buy infants via #surrogacy, no one scans the buyers' background. https://t.co/UaD4aBSRkd

— Elly Arrow (@EllyArrow) January 1, 2026

I can’t get over the 4 years. The bastard raped a 3-year-old girl. Four years? There are no words. He’ll come out of jail soon and be free to buy more babies to rape.

The mother of the child is the best friend of the rapist’s husband. She thought she was doing a good thing by gifting him her baby.

What is wrong with all of these people, including the prosecutor, is not explained.

Let’s look at the positives and the negatives of the administration striking Venezuela and removing Maduro:

Positives:

1. Maduro is legitimately terrible and turned Venezuela into a cesspool from which many of our problems here in America stem.
2. Once Venezuela is free, Venezuelan refugees can go home.
3. This is very upsetting to Putin and hits the Russian oil trade more than any of the pretense at sanctions done by the EU.
4. Forgot to add: Sheinbaum is pissing herself with fear. Because this can happen to her narcoregime, too.

Negatives:

1. Latin America will hate us even more and ally with Russia/China even harder.
2. This will intensify the split among Republicans.
3. Since nobody on here is helping, I found a negative myself: this will hit the already ailing Canadian economy since the US will no longer need Canada’s crude oil. I love Canada, and for me this is in the negative column.

What would you add to these lists?

Anyone who says slavic women are like latinas either doesn't know latinas or doesn't know slavic women. Because I could not think of two types of women who are more polar opposites.

— Paisios (@AngloVarangian) January 1, 2026

Totally. This is why I adore Hispanic women. They are like my Jungian shadow, both in a good way and a bad one. Contemplating their radical differences is extremely enjoyable because it’s like being reunited with an amputated part of your self.

By the way, the owner of one of the pairs of UGGs is a kid whose family has lived in the radius of 5 miles around here for a crazy number of generations, running a family business that is a local landmark. Imagine how extraordinarily stupid I’d have to be to claim that I’m as American as they are.

At a local trampoline park filled with people of all ages, I left all our coats and shoes, including two pairs of UGGs, a pair of Michael Kors sneakers, and a leather jacket, unattended in complete certainty that nobody would take them. A young dad left his laptop and walked over to the basketball hoops from where the laptop isn’t visible. There are two unattended Stanley cups whose owners are certain they’ll be there when they come back.

It’s not abnormal or immoral to want to live like this.

Here’s a question to ponder. We’ve been hearing a lot from the leaders of both political parties that America is based on a set of beliefs, and anybody who shares them is automatically American.

But how do we know anybody’s beliefs? Because they say so? Words are cheap.

Also, what do we do in cases like Zohran Mamdani who gets elected to a position of great power and immediately declares that he’s against American principles and wants the opposite ones?

When words become more important than reality, the results are always bad. Propositional or credal mean “based on words.” A propositional nation means no nation.

There are 1,794 day care centers in MN.

1,235 of these list a Somali sounding name as the owner for 111,015 children.

Total Somali pop 84,000
Pct on welfare 81%

If the parents are not working, why do they need child care?

Do non-Somali children go to Somali speaking centers?

— MNConservative🇺🇸⭐️ (@RealJMPeterman) January 1, 2026

Who else thinks that these revelations of fraud will come to absolutely nothing whatsoever?

I don’t want to be cynical but what is the solution? Dragging screaming, tearful black women in hijabs away from their nine kids? Having that be the news story for months? And then what? Even if several of the fraudsters go on trial, what prevents an army of new ones replacing them? Nobody is getting deported, that’s all a fantasy. We couldn’t deport Kilmar Abrego García who is illegal, and these are all citizens. So then what? Even taxing remittances has not been passed and there seem to be no plans to do it.

And what’s the motivation to do anything? Voters will move on from this story to some imaginary war on Venezuela (if they are on the right) or war on Denmark (if they are on the left).

You should see the procedure I go through to expend state funds on buying printer paper for my department. We keep the paper under lock and key. There’s pre-order accountability and post-order accountability. I know everything that was bought with department money in the past 6 years, and I can guarantee that no state funds were wasted or misappropriated. I’m an honest person, and the recent revelations of mass fraud didn’t tempt me to start stealing. But now whenever I file a request to buy a package of printer paper in the amount of $6.55, I’ll feel stupid. And cynical. That’s the only effect of this debacle. To make honest people cynical and disappointed in the very concept of a country as a meaningful category of engaging with reality.

All day I’ve felt like absolute donkey’s vomit. I had no alcohol yesterday, ate very sparingly, and engaged in no excesses. The only explanation for feeling like the world has wiped its rugged butt with me today is that I caught a virus. Which is extremely bad timing as I have tons to do in the next few days.

Thank you to the person who recommended the book about Matthew Shepard in the anonymous comments. I’ve been listening to it and it’s kept me very entertained on the day when I’m utterly useless. Great book, mega shocking.