Of course it's about the oil.  Did anybody really believe they would send a fucking Aircraft Carrier Group to interdict a few drugs?

Next question:  Can the CIA successfully install a puppet goobermint to replace Maduro?

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/12/09/the-trump-administrations-real-goal-in-venezuela

The Trump administration's real goal in Venezuela

RE

If I see all white faces I get uncomfortable.  It has happened.

Socialism AI is a revolutionary new chatbot developed by the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) to harness the power of amplified human cognition in the service of socialist revolution. It will expand and accelerate the political education of workers, student youth, progressive intellectuals, and artists around the world on the basis of the world scientific outlook of Marxism.

The virtual Uncle Karl is only 3 days away!

QuoteThe designation of AI as "artificial intelligence." The term has been repeated so incessantly —and with so little precision— that it obscures more than it clarifies. It creates the impression of something mystical, autonomous, somehow divorced from human thought, and therefore either wondrously omnipotent or terrifyingly alien.

The phrase "artificial intelligence" suggests that we stand in the presence of a kind of counterfeit or ersatz intelligence. Yet we do not speak this way about any other technological extension of human capacity. We do not call a forklift or a hydraulic press an "artificial muscle," though it multiplies human physical power many thousands of times. We do not describe riding a bicycle, driving a car or boarding a jetliner as "artificial running" or "artificial flight."

Modern telescopes no longer rely solely on visible light but detect invisible electromagnetic radiation —radio, infrared, X-ray and gamma— thereby vastly extending the sensory powers of humanity. These technologies amplify human capability; they do not replace its essence.

Why, then, this insistence on labeling computational systems as "artificial intelligence"? The term is not scientifically neutral. It mystifies technology by implying that intelligence can be somehow fabricated in isolation from human intellectual labor, as if it were an autonomous substance that can be synthesized like a chemical compound. This is not merely inaccurate; it is ideologically useful to the ruling class. It encourages passivity. It encourages awe. And it encourages the belief that the technology exists above and beyond social control.

While it's certainly true that Amerika in the 1950s had plenty of Black & Hispanic people, the country "felt" much Whiter for several reasons.

First off, communities were much more segregated.  So if you were a White person going to a public school, chances were that you lived in a White neighborhood and all your classmates were white.  That was even true in NYC when I moved back to Flushing in 1967.  The neighborhood was still mainly Italian & Irish, with a few Greeks that had immigrated post-WWII.

After Vietnam in the 1970s-80s however, Asians started moving en masse into Flushing, and by the time my mom sold the house in 1996, the white folks were moving to Long Island and the neighboehood was at least half Asian.  Today, Flushing is the biggest "Chinatown" in the world, and bigger than the original NYC Chinatown in Manhattan.

Far as Muslims go, I don't ever remember seeing a woman wearing a Hijab on the street in those years.  Migration from Africa and MENA didn't really pick up until after the Gulf War in the 1990s.  Immigration from Europe slowed down as their Birthrates dropped, and to keep the numbers up and Cheap Labor flowing in, immigration to the FSoA since the Millenium has been nearly entirely Brown or Asian people which have been dispersing all across the FSoA and into many formerly Lily White communities.

The second major reason is the perception you get from the Media.  Right up through the 1990s, TV shows generally featured All White casts whether they were Sitcoms or Dramas, except for the shows directed priimarily towar a Black audience like The Jeffersons or Sanford & Son.  Today, no shows EVER have an All White cast, they are always nicely WOKE with mixed race couples and a Rainbow of kids including adoptees to make sure a couple with a White Dad and Black Mom has a Korean son and Egyptian daughter too. lol.  Their next door neighbors are Lesbians in a mixed religion Hindu-Jewish combination with a Nicaraguan son who joined a Hare Krishna for Jesus cult. lol.

I didn't really notice how much the general complexion of Amerika had changed until I moved up her in 2007 and did my first 4th of July Parade.  Alaska was one of the last holdout Lily White states.  3 miles of all Caucasian with the occasional Native watching the Parade.


RE

Quote from: RETrump wants to recreate a white America that never existed
RE

I find this topic interesting. If only because I think I have noticed some of the psychological disfunction that folks suffer from in certain areas that lead them to believe there is like this invasion of foreigners.

So, first you grow up in some place where its all poor white folk, with white folks being the Doctor you go to, your teachers (first women through maybe 5th grade) and then mixed men and women. White folk still.

You complete in sports, and except for the occasional black athlete, in football, maybe some sprinters and hurdlers in track, and arrive at college. White folks everywhere, a rare Asian or black person maybe (in my case a cadre of Saudi Arabians sent to the US for engineering, but they were anomalous). And this was the world through the beginning of ones professional career.

I compare that to my kids growing up. The percentage of non-whites throughout public schooling, the white doctors are harder to find, same with dentists, foreign languages and clicks of non-white folks speaking something other than English are common even in the 1st-6th grade environment. Primarily Spanish, but certainly a reasonable number of Asians. Found a white dentist, he sold his practice to some nice Chinese married dentists who aren't him. My general practitioner is mostly white I think, with some Hispanic background of some sort. Really nice. Gay, which doesn't bother me...but wouldn't that be a surprise to folks 40 years ago and make them jumpy?

In a polyglot world, the places that remember the white haired male doctor that took care of the town, what must they think when he is replaced with a gay Asian woman? Same with other professionals, when they hear foreign languages at their local bank...from both customers and employees?

I am just jeakous when I bump into different languages, and wish I was bilingual. But it is just as easy to imagine folks I grew up with being afraid that any two foreigners are speaking in a language they don't understand...and making fun of the white gringo listening in.

I think some of this idea explains why my parents went MAGA in 2016, but the main impetus was the feeling their party had left them behind with their inclusive shenanigans. But they had flinched when they moved to be with grandkids elsewhere for awhile, a culture shock with all the new stuff, languages, attitudes. It lasted 2 years, then they moved back to where they (and I) had lived going back in to the 70's.

But all these things I see, when comparing to yesteryear to now, fits in nicely with the idea that folks want something back they THINK they once had....and it is because they are uncomfortable with the change. They want Mayberry back.

Not that either party will give it to them, but both will play into the charade with words I imagine, slogans, claims. MAGA just got there first, and in the Trumpsters 2nd term are pushing it to the extremes.

MAKE AMERIKA WHITE AGAIN!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/06/trump-immigration-whiteness

Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed

RE

Looks like 99% sure for Tehran.  Can u imagine trying to Relocate Los Angeles? lol.

WTF will they move the city TO?  Not like the rest of the country is swimming.  Will they hire the Chinese to build an Insta-City on a 2/3 Contract?  Build it Fast/Cheap/Good, pick 2.  lol.

https://www.wired.com/story/why-tehran-is-running-out-of-water-iran-climate-change-drought-extreme-weather/

Why Tehran Is Running Out of Water

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Dec 07, 2025, 11:37 AMAllied forces will be marching into the ruins of Washington DC about 2038-2039 if things keep rhyming

Who makes up the Allied Forces?  Chinese & Ruskies?

Given the stockpile of Thermonuclear MIRV Warheads in the possession of all the main parties involved, I do not think the rhyming will be quite so exact once the military action escalates.

Far as how the average J6P will react, I expect the STICKER SHOCK coming in January will not play well.



RE

Quotewell....then we get to see if Americans are even Americans anymore.

Based on what we have seen so far, I'm not getting my hopes up.  Consider the key changes in German society by early 1934: One year into Hitler.

Gleichschaltung (Coordination): All institutions are forcibly aligned with Nazi ideology.
The Enabling Act (March 1933):The Enabling Act (March 1933): The power to enact laws without the Reichstag.
Removal of Opposition: The first concentration camp, Dachau, opened in March 1933 for political prisoners.

Things are not moving as fast as then, but we have Fascism Lite 🍺 no doubt.  Oppression with half the calories.  The rhymes with Germany in 1933 are all over the place.  Allied forces will be marching into the ruins of Washington DC about 2038-2039 if things keep rhyming.  In a book I was reading decades ago the author was comparing Germans of that era to Americans.  Of All the European nations the Germans seemed most like Americans to him.  So if things keep rhyming our western front will be a very cold place to die.

Quote from: RE

THEATLANTIC.COM • 2025-12-05

We Are Looking at a Massive Crisis

Health-care costs are about to spike in a way that Americans can't afford.

RE

Small changes by any administration can potentially go unnoticed, and then the cumulative effect could be a mess.

This certainly doesn't look like one of those. When people who claim to want to blow things up, whatever it is, (Civil Rights Act, Education department, the 19th Amendment of the Constitution, and now apparently the 14th) actually start to DO so.....well....then we get to see if Americans are even Americans anymore.