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About a month ago, I predicted to someone that Venezuela would be Trump’s Iraq War. There are some differences. For one thing, Venezuela had a presidential election where the presumed winner was never allowed to assume that office. (Hopefully Machado and Gonzales will be able to assist in this transition). Also, the political power of petroleum interests is substantially weaker than it was in 2003. Finally, Trump has much lower international legitimacy than George W. Bush had in 2003. Even if Trump acted honorably in this case, the international community will treat Trump’s words and actions as both dishonest and corrupt. Maybe a President Biden or a President Harris or even a President Haley might have been able to convince the world that this military intervention would restore democracy and benefit the world, it is doubtful that anyone would believe a U.S. president who lies about even the most stupid of things. Nobody will or should believe that Trump/Rubio/Hegseth will play a constructive role in restoring democracy and justice in Venezuela. Instead the rest of the world will be wondering about what corrupt deals Trump made with opposition leaders to further Trump’s private autocratic interests.
(When I said that Trump had lower international legitimacy than George W. Bush did in 2003, that’s saying a lot because most of the world opposed Bush’s 2003 intervention. Sure, oil interests (Halliburton, etc.) was driving that narrative, but at least Paul Bremer and Colin Powell and even Bush himself could “talk the talk” about democracy, freedom, etc. I doubt that Secretary of State Rubio could even do that..)
ELECTORAL-VOTE has compiled a useful (but very long) reference to all the wrong or criminal actions by the lawless lying racist tax-cheat.
What strikes me today is that many Venezuelans are probably happy to have Americans intervene in their country. They have suffered greatly under Maduro and would welcome outside assistance and investment. But unlike Bush’s flawed intervention in Iraq (where Bush still sent lots of economic assistance to restore civil society and rebuild infrastructure), I expect the Trump Administration to send absolutely nothing. Trump is probably the stingiest man alive; as a businessmen, Trump took pride in shortchanging vendors whenever possible; as a politician, Trump took pride in dismantling foreign aid programs and funding for education, science and health care. What happens when Venezuelans realize that the US government under Trump will do absolutely nothing to help rebuild Venezuelan civil society (other than to help American companies buy land and take advantage of the country’s natural resources)? Perhaps V’s neighbors will deliver this kind of assistance; perhaps EU or China will step in. Perhaps nobody will step in, and Venezuela’s society will continue to deteriorate. Regardless, it seems inevitable that Venezuelans will view U.S. actions towards its country with a combination of disillusionment and anger.
Alex Bronzini-Vendor on the decline of English majors and humanities degrees:
The fixation on “wokeness,” however, obscures a much larger and more consequential transformation reshaping the humanities at Harvard and elsewhere. The most serious pressure on Western history—and on the humanities more broadly—comes not from ideological capture, but from the economic priorities of academic institutions.
Over the past decade, student demand for the humanities has cratered. Nationally, the share of undergraduates majoring in humanities disciplines has fallen by roughly 25 percent between 2012 and 2020. The number of English majors declined by about one-third between 2013 and 2023. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, humanities degrees fell from 16.8 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in 2010-11 to 12.8 percent in 2020-21—a sharp contraction both in absolute terms and as a share of overall enrollment.
Harvard has not been immune. As of 2022, just seven percent of Harvard freshmen intended to concentrate in the humanities, down from 20 percent in 2012. (Because Harvard must be different, it calls majors “concentrations.”) That figure stood at 30 percent in the 1970s. Harvard’s history department has felt these pressures especially acutely: its number of concentrators plunged by 50 percent between 2011 and 2020.
“I do not understand why you would mass-pardon people who assaulted police officers. I don’t get it. I never will.” (SPECIAL PROSECUTOR JACK SMITH about Trump’s action to mass-pardon 1500 convicted criminals, 33 of which have committed additional crimes — including murder, sexual assault, burglary, aggravated kidnapping, stalking, making terrorist threats) (Source. Also this).
TRULY SHOCKING. An NBC report about the Minneapolis shooting mentioned that last year Trump cancelled Biden’s 2022 executive order to require that federal law enforcement officers wear body cameras. I looked it up — it’s true and horrifying. It’s now clear that the Trump Administration is restricting the gathering of evidence about encounters with federal officers so that citizens must accept unquestioningly whatever version of the truth that these officers provide.
SIGN ON BONUSES FOR ICE?! Wow, did not know that the federal government was using US tax money to pay up to $50,000 as a sign on bonus for people who join ICE. I wonder how much of a sign on bonus you need to offer these people to persuade them not to shoot law-abiding citizens. Update: It looks like the bonus is paid in $10,000 installments over several years(source).
From a profile of Vancouver interviewer Nardwuar:
“What my mom taught me, basically, was who, what, where, when, and how. She also taught me that everyone has a story–you just have to find it. And, most importantly, she taught me that it’s the interviewer’s job to make the interviewee excited to be there.”
(See also the interviews I have conducted. )
Michael Barrett on Elaine May’s 1971 movie, A New Leaf starring herself and Walter Matthau. It was originally a 3 hour movie significantly cut by the studio (eventually resulting in a lawsuit which May lost). Despite this, it was beloved by critics and audiences aslike. Barrett asks:
It’s fair to ask: would a woman executive have tolerated a three-hour comedy? And what about the males who turn in overlong cuts? If Mike Nichols had turned in a three-hour version of The Graduate, it would have been taken away from him. It seems more likely, in this and other films she directed, that May belongs to that list of otherwise male creative geniuses who naturally clash with the commercial system, including Erich Von Stroheim, Orson Welles and Otto Preminger. Rather than demean May’s abilities, such a view pays her a higher compliment when assessing her career as a director, as opposed to a woman director.
Recently it was pointed out to me that David Bowie played Pontius Pilate in Scorcese’s Last Temptation of Christ. Here is that chilling scene where he appeared (YT)
The Guardian: British Grandmother on tourist visa locked up for 6 weeks after husband’s work visa had expired. In unrelated news, the “US saw 4.5m fewer visits from international travellers in 2025; visits from Canada were down by more than 22%, from Germany by more than 11% and from the UK by 15%. The World Travel & Tourism Council, the global body representing the industry, estimated that the decline in international tourism last year cost the US $12.5bn in lost revenue.
I would hardly call myself a world traveler, but I have enough experience in Eastern Europe to know that it’s easy for travelers to mess up on visa regulations. The rules are often confusing and opaque. Once I relied on the English language portion of the Slovak embassy as a reference to that country’s visa policies. Apparently, the rules had changed, but the Slovakian government had not bothered to update the English-language portions of their website. Too bad, foreigners! (That one day delay it caused to my trip still makes me angry 20 years later — I curse the Slovakian government still!)
In the case of the British grandmother, she didn’t have any problems understanding the language. But it often can be difficult to decipher the visa rules even if you do know the language — especially if the foreign government is doing everything to trip up foreign visitors.
HOUSTON COLUMNIST REDISCOVERED: Can’t believe I never knew that longtime Houston columnist Lynn Ashby has been regularly posting columns. Here’s his latest column about the Texas primaries. Here are other columns. Thanks to Ken Fountain for mentioning him in a column about how Fountain got interested in journalism.
HILARY’S SPEECH (reposted verbatim by satirist Andy Borowitz) makes clear what a mockery the GOP subpoena of her was.
As Secretary of State, I appointed a former federal prosecutor, Lou CdeBaca, to ramp up our global antitrafficking efforts. I oversaw nearly 170 anti-trafficking programs in 70 nations and directly pressed foreign leaders to crack down on trafficking networks in their countries. Every year we published a global report to shine a light on abuses. The findings of those reports triggered sanctions on countries failing to make progress, so they became a powerful diplomatic tool to drive concrete action.
I insisted that the United States be included in the report for the first time ever in 2011. Because we must hold ourselves not just to the same standard as the rest of the world but to an even higher one. Sex trafficking and modern slavery should have no place in America. None.
Infuriatingly, the Trump Administration gutted the Trafficking in Persons Office at the State Department, cutting more than 70 percent of the career civil and foreign service experts who worked so hard to prevent trafficking crimes. The annual trafficking report, required by law, was delayed for months. The message from the Trump Administration to the American people and the world could not be clearer: combatting human trafficking is no longer an American priority under the Trump White House.
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