speaking the truth

There's so much that can be talked about that you just can't talk about everything that's problematic. Such as Congress having the power to declare war, and that being ignored: he decided he was going to be God Emperor and he's getting away with it. Or having a completely feckless House of Representatives not doing their job of enforcing Checks and Balances. But I'd be typing all day and still be getting nowhere.

So I'm just going to focus on one point. Let's talk about Venezuela's natural resources.

OIL. Natural gas. BAUXITE. GOLD. Hydroelectric power.

The USA doesn't have bauxite, which is kinda critical for producing aluminum, and aluminum is needed in pretty much every manufacturing industry. Canada has vast gobs of bauxite, but the moldering orange residing at 1600 Pennsylvania who pretends to be an intelligent life form kinda pissed off the Canadians with his antics coming out of the gate once he was sworn in last January. I doubt Venezuela has aluminum refineries, and and it takes a long time to build aluminum refineries, not to mention the transmission lines and other infrastructure, and you need civil stability to do that. Military pacification does not ensure civil stability.

Gold. Well, he needs something to cover up all those Home Depot decorations that he's hot gluing all over the Oval Office.

And oil. Let's talk about oil.

As we have seen with his gross tax on the American people through tariffs, he doesn't understand diddly squat about economics. He thinks that by seizing all this oil - Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world - that the USA will become hugely wealthy. And by the USA he means his oil buddies.

There's a problem with that thinking.

For oil to be hugely profitable, it has to be trading high. And it ain't. There's only one oil company particularly interested in developing Venezuelan oil, I believe it's Chevron, I could be mistaken.

Here's oil averages for the last decade:

Year WTI Approx Avg Price / Brent Avg
2015 ~$48 / ~$52
2016 ~$43 / ~$44
2017 ~$50 / ~$54
2018 ~$65 / ~$71
2019 ~$57 / ~$64
2020 ~$39 / ~$42
2021 ~$68 / ~$70
2022 ~$94 / ~$101
2023 ~$78 / ~$82
2024 ~$76–80 / ~$80–82
2025 (partial) Roughly mid $60s to low $70s possible average (based on Brent average ~72 as of mid-year)

Right now it's trading at around $60 a barrel, which is around the break even point. Oil isn't very profitable right now, and with the increase in EVs and renewables, plus forecasted growth in nuclear generation, it's hard to see huge increases in the future. You always have big seasonal fluctuations at the pump, but that doesn't always reflect changes in the barrel price - that's just gouging to get consumer dollars as they travel for holidays.

Demand for oil and renewables is eating its lunch, which is possibly why he ordered the shutdown of off-shore wind farms, aside from his idiotic hatred of them.

Now, was Maduro not a good guy? Sure. He rigged elections, he was running a black fleet doing oil trades for Iran. Was he a narco trafficker? I don't know about that, regardless I don't think he was remotely shipping fentanyl into the USA via small fishing boats and certainly the USA is not serious about dealing with its own drug problems. But if you're going to go around imposing regime change on people who rig elections, why is Putin still in power? Why did the Castros rule for so long? There're lots of examples around the world of similar countries where people seized power. Let's talk about Bush v. Gore right here in our own country where the Supreme Court cut short a recount.

It's a nasty argument that rarely turns out well. Don't force regime change from the outside, don't try to impose democracy. A quote come to mind: 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.'

We know how well imposed regime change works. We can see how peaceful Iraq and Afghanistan are these days, I'm sure Venezuela will have a similar calm transition.

You know, he should stop shit posting on Untruth Social right now - it's probably blocking the call from the Nobel Committee.