Venezuela is about the oil, but not in the way the left says

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article about the Venezuelan oil industry. Venezuela’s oil is very thick and needs to be mixed with thinner oil to be usable:

… [T]he oil that in the past has been used for this [thinning process] is American oil which was exported to Venezuela, blended with Venezuelan sludge and then sent back to US gulf coast refineries to be turned into gasoline, diesel etc.

However, recently, a fair chunk of the oil that Venezuela used to blend was oil from Russia and/or Iran that was shipped in on the “shadow fleet” and then sold on having been laundered with Venezuelan oil to mask its sanctioned origins.

That’s not going to happen any more. Which will hurt Putin and the Mullahs2 a good deal because they really need that oil money to prop up their regimes and finance their military forces. …

Tie that in to the oil embargo for all Venezuelan oil announced last month and you hurt two other deserving targets too. First, and most obviously, it stops Cuba from getting cheap oil or bartering for it. As I said in my previous Insta-analysis3 this puts the Cuban regime in significant pain and may cause it to collapse. Cuba doesn’t have any hard currency money to pay for oil so it cannot buy it on the open market even though that would be legally fine.

Neither Russia nor Iran can afford to subsidize Cuba by giving them oil so Cuba is kind of stuck. One possibility is that Cuba will ship off a bunch of solders to Russia to die in Ukraine in exchange for oil, but that’s tricky because it exposes Russia’s oil tankers to the US and, worse, Ukraine.

Much more at the link. It’s a series of oil dominoes.

And also this:

Finally, the other thing the Maduro seizing did, was put Venezuela’s plans to seize the oil fields in neighboring Guyana on hold – probably permanently.

US control of the Venezuelan oil for now also would represent leverage over the remaining pro-Maduro power structure in Venezuela:

… [I]t seems like the Trump administration has decided that it makes the decision on how much oil Venezuela can sell and who to. For now that number is zero. I am sure that the Chavistas are being asked how long they think they can survive without oil income, and whether they might prefer to leave Venezuela for other climes and let people that the US approves of run the country and, more importantly, fix the oil industry so it can export oil to places the US approves of in volumes that mean that the global oil price drops.

Venezuela seems as though it may be a keystone in the Arch of Evil.

The US seizes tankers

The New Neo Posted on by

Breaking news – perhaps important, perhaps not so very:

The U.S. carried out operations Wednesday to seize two oil tankers linked to Venezuela — one in the North Atlantic and one in the Caribbean Sea, officials said.

The U.S. European Command confirmed the seizure of the Marinera, a Venezuela-linked oil tanker formerly known as Bella-1. It said the vessel was seized for violations of U.S. sanctions and pursuant to a warrant issued by a U.S. federal court after being tracked by USCGC Munro.

The U.S. has been following the tanker since last month, and CBS News first reported on Monday that American forces were planning to intercept it. …

A Russian submarine and other naval vessels had been deployed to escort the tanker as the U.S. followed it, two U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News on Tuesday. …

The Russian Maritime Register of Shipping lists the tanker as being ported out of Sochi, off the western coast of the Black Sea. The New York Times reported that the Russian government officially had asked the U.S. to stop all attempts to interdict the ship.

However, the ship apparently wasn’t carrying oil:

Russia has deployed a submarine and other naval assets to escort an aging oil tanker, Marinera, formerly known as Bella 1, which the US has been trying to intercept.

The oil tanker, which sails under the Russian flag, has historically transported Venezuelan crude oil. However, reports suggest that the tanker is not currently carrying oil.

The tanker … is accused of failing to abide by US sanctions and shipping Iranian oil. The US has been pursuing the tanker, which began its journey from Iran and was heading to Venezuela, across the Atlantic.

More here.

It’s been five years since J6

The New Neo Posted on by

Time flies; things change.

There’s still plenty that we don’t know about J6. One thing we do know is that the Democrats made sure their narrative of the day got cemented in people’s minds very early.

Here’s Victor Davis Hanson with a few remarks on J6, in a video I think was made fairly recently but before his surgery (hat tip: commenter “huxley”):

Mamdani’s Rental Ripoff theatricals

The New Neo Posted on by

Mamdani is staging a series of struggle sessions in which people complain about bad kulaks landlords. These events have been given the alliterative title of “Rental Ripoff” hearings:

New Yorkers will be able to lament about their rental woes – from hidden fees, retaliation, discrimination, illegal eviction and deplorable building conditions – during Mamdani’s first 100 days in office, according to an executive order signed by the mayor on Sunday. …

“In a city filled with older buildings that could use some tender loving care, some landlords are taking advantage of the housing market to gouge tenants with outrageous fees, all while leaving them trying to survive in homes with collapsing ceilings and sinking floors,” Mamdani said in an Instagram video. …

“He’s one-sided right now. Everything is about destroying the landlords,” said Humberto Lopes, CEO of H.L. Dynasty and the Gotham Housing Alliance.

“You think all the landlords are slumlords?” Lopes added.

If you help the landlords, you can help the tenants. Landlords can make the repairs if you help them.”

Instead, Lopes argued that Mamdani was going in the other direction by squeezing property owners.

This approach is highly likely to involve a succession of theatrical ventings without much attention paid to economic realities. That omission would be a hallmark of socialism/Communism.

One of the commenters at the article writes this:

Is Zoron also planning on holding hearings on tenants abusing the landlords? The deadbeats, the squatters, the tenants that tear up the property, or the rent controlled apartments that are money losers for the landlords.

I think we know the answer.

I wonder if Mamdani plans a similarly creative and theatrical approach to this problem:

In New York City, making a profit on real estate has become increasingly difficult. Rent-stabilization laws built on the mantra that “housing is a human right,” a dysfunctional housing court, and myriad other interventions have driven thousands of units off the market, giving rise to the phenomenon of New York’s “ghost apartments.”

The city now has nearly 50,000 empty units, absent from the market either because their operating costs exceed legal rents or because they require considerable renovations. Recently, I visited four of these ghost apartments. Together, they reveal the city’s fundamentally broken housing market and what needs to be done to fix it.

In New York, rent stabilization laws often mean that the cost of making repairs and improvements in apartments – especially older ones – cannot be recouped. So the apartments remain vacant and in disrepair.

There are possible solutions, but I would be extremely surprised if Mamdani and his team would ever consider them:

“New York is unique in its rent-control system,” Kenny Burgos, who heads the New York Apartment Association, said. “Even Los Angeles [gives landlords] an ability to reset rents after [apartments] become vacant.”

Burgos’s suggestion is to amend the law to restore landlords’ ability to raise rents after vacancy. Under this proposal, rents would continue to be subjected to the Rent Guidelines Board’s maximum increases while a lease is active. But landlords would be allowed to raise rents once the units come off the market, reestablishing the economic incentive to renovate. This would mitigate the effects of the below-inflation rent increases that the RGB has permitted over the previous decade.

Burgos didn’t endorse it, but there’s an even more effective option: eliminate rent stabilization entirely. This would let rents rise to meet demand while also making renovations profitable again. New Yorkers whose incomes are below a certain level could get a housing voucher, thereby restoring the investment required to maintain, construct, and operate buildings. New Yorkers would gain a sustainable solution to rent burdens while also keeping the existing housing stock in good shape.

Democrats on the capture of Maduro

The New Neo Posted on by

I was wondering whether any prominent Democrats had broken ranks and praised the Venezuela operation that netted Maduro.

And so of course I thought of John Fetterman, and he didn’t disappoint:

“I don’t know why we can’t just acknowledge it’s been a good thing what’s happened. I’ve seen the speeches from, whether it’s Leader Schumer or kinds of past tweets from President Biden,” he said, referring to recent criticism of the military operation by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and former President Biden’s tough talk about Maduro in the past.

“We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here,” Fetterman said. …

“I salute our military, what they’ve done,” he said on Fox News. “That was really surgical and precise and very efficient — so why we can’t celebrate these kinds of things?

The Pennsylvania senator said Maduro’s ouster opens up the possibility of a more prosperous future for Venezuelans.

Decades ago such comments might have been standard from the opposition. No more.

Fetterman was not entirely alone among Democrats, however. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of all people (who represents a district in Florida, however, which probably has plenty of voters in favor of Maduro’s capture), has spoken similarly, although her comments were mixed with some criticism:

“The capture of the brutal, illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who oppressed Venezuela’s people is welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule. However, cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., wrote on X.

“Venezuelans deserve the promise of democracy and the rule of law, not a state of endless violence and spiraling disorder. My hope is it offers a passage to true democracy and liberation. This action offers beleaguered Venezuelans a chance to seat their true, democratically elected president, Edmundo González.”

She criticized the GOP administration for apparently failing to notify Congress beforehand, however.

Most – or perhaps all? – of the rest of the Democrats followed party orders, although not always happily:

Some Democrats are grumbling at their party’s largely oppositional stance to President Trump’s raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying privately that their colleagues should be celebrating.

Why it matters: These lawmakers argue it could be a major political miscalculation if the party fails to applaud the downfall of a brutal dictator with sufficient volume, even given grave concerns about the operation’s legality and longer-term ramifications.

Such independent thinkers.

And of course the Democrats say it’s an impeachable offense – but then again, that’s true of everything Trump does. They’ve managed to strip impeachment of all meaning, but if they win the House in 2026 (perish the thought) they’ll go for the hat trick of at least three impeachments for Trump.

ADDENDUM:

Once upon a time, Democrats demanded Maduro’s ouster.

Who will be the next long-term head of Venezuela?

The New Neo Posted on by

Late last night I wrote a draft for this post, and in it I said the following:

Was Maduro’s VP Delcy Rodriguez the mole? Did she cooperate to bring him down? It’s a weird thought and I doubt it’s the case, but it nevertheless occurs to me as a possibility. After all, she knew the US wanted Maduro, and she knew she was next in line, and she knew she’d get points for helping the US bring him down, and she almost certainly had access to information about his movements. Is her reward that they’ll give her a chance to run the country, if she plays ball with the US?

Now I see this:

Delcy Rodriguez has been formally sworn in as new president of Venezuela, amid strong rumors that she cooperated with the CIA to oust Maduro. …

She’s quickly expressed her willingness to cooperate with the United States on the future of Venezuela, in a significant shift in tone following Maduro’s Friday into Saturday morning ‘shock’ abduction by US special forces.

“We consider it a priority to move towards a balanced and respectful relationship between the US and Venezuela,” Rodriguez wrote on Telegram Sunday.

And more than that, her following words convey willingness of Caracas to bend the knee: “We extend an invitation to the US government to work together on a cooperation agenda, aimed at shared development, within the framework of international law, and to strengthen lasting community coexistence,” she stated.

I’m not even going to opine on what I think will happen, because I think it’s way too early.

Here’s Rubio on the subject of what comes next:

And from commenter “TJ,” this seems pretty important, if true:

Apparently, the Venezuelan Constitution has a proviso in the event of unforeseen interruption of top leadership. First, the Vice President now controls their government. Second, he or she must declare an election within 45 days.

When I checked, I found the following, which somewhat resembles it:

Venezuela’s Supreme Court late Saturday ordered Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to become the country’s interim leader, after the United States seized President Nicolas Maduro and whisked him out of the country. …

The judges stopped short of declaring Maduro permanently absent from office, a ruling that requires holding elections within 30 days.

And back in NY, Maduro says he’s innocent, the head of Venezuela, and a prisoner of war. The judge in the case is 92-year-old Alvin Hellerstein, who is an Orthodox Jew and was appointed by Bill Clinton.

The report of MAGA’s fracture may be greatly exaggerated …

The New Neo Posted on by

… and although the cracks are not imaginary, we don’t know if they’re deep fissures or only surface flaws.

In this Tablet article, Michael Doran seems to think they’re deep and probably fatal to MAGA. The piece is very long and I confess I gave up reading it long before the end. I already know a great deal about the Fuentes/Carlson wing that takes up a large portion of its analysis, but the piece seemed to be short on figures that would tell us how much influence these groups really have.

As I said, the article is very long, but all I could find on that topic was a throwaway couple of lines:

Since the October 27 Carlson–Fuentes interview exploded across Rumble and flooded onto X, posts branding Trump a “Zionist puppet” or recasting Ukraine aid as “globalist war funding” have racked up millions of impressions, often outpacing sober defenses of Trump’s big-tent project. Holocaust-denying memes outrun statements by government officials. Musk’s new location-tagging features have already exposed a swath of “America First” accounts as foreign operators—Pakistanis, Indians, Nigerians—posing as domestic populists. It was a brief reminder that a trend line on X is not the voice of the American electorate.

And yet it seems the assumption of Doran’s article is that X is the voice of the American electorate.

I’ve written several times on the subject, and I certainly don’t know the answer as to how big the MAGA splinter group is. But I see no indication that Doran is making a serious effort to tackle the question.

In no surprise at all, Tim Walz withdraws from Minnesota governor’s race

The New Neo Posted on by

Even Walz could read the writing on the wall, although he wasn’t happy about it:

On Monday morning, we learned that Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) is dropping his reelection bid.

Walz released a statement Monday morning confirming reports that he was dropping out of the race and later held a press conference.

During the press conference, he apparently just read his previous statement, and took no questions:

He again accused Republicans and President Donald Trump of exploiting the crisis politically. He again accused the White House of demonizing Somali communities and withholding child care funds.

He again insisted his administration had aggressively tackled fraud, fired bad actors, locked down programs, and put the right people in charge. And he again cast himself as the adult in the room, reluctantly abandoning politics so he could focus on governing.

This clears the way for Amy Klobuchar to run for the office; my guess is that she’ll run and she’ll win:

Klobuchar didn’t comment on her future political plans in a statement Monday. But the senator, commenting on the governor’s move to combat the fraud scandal full time rather than to seek another term in office, said, “Walz made the difficult decision to focus on his job and the challenges facing our state rather than campaigning and running for re-election.”

The senator has won all four of her Senate elections by wide margins, including a nearly 16-point re-election in 2024.

Selfless Tim Walz.

As soon as I saw that the NY Times was focusing on the Minnesota fraud cases, I realized that the Democrats wanted Walz out of the race. On December 1 I wrote:

But still, the [Times’] highlighting of Walz’s role surprised me. My guess is that the Times would like him to refrain from any more participation in national politics, he was such a disaster in 2024. I have no evidence for this; it’s just a hunch.

And of course, because the Times is basically the Democrats’ propaganda organ, that meant that the Democrats wanted Tim out. They got what they wanted.

It is astounding to me that Walz came fairly close to becoming VP.