What Would Nellis Say?

 

Had enough winning yet?

By Rick Stiller​​​​​​​

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Trump’s illegal “Operation Absolute Resolve” deployed 150 of the most lethal aircraft in our arsenal, including F-22 Raptors, F-35 Lightning IIs, B-1 Lancer Bombers, surveillance drones, and electronic warfare planes, to neutralize Venezuelan air defenses, before fleets of helicopters carrying more than 200 Special Forces personnel swarmed in to “extract” (kidnap) Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

 

The lightning raid left at least 80 Venezuelan casualties and his corrupt government intact, with the pro-government Supreme Court anointing Maduro’s vice president and oil minister, Delcy Rodriguez, as interim president. Delcy and her brother, Jorge, who is  President of the National Assembly, are considered the real controllers and strategists of the ruling socialist movement in the country. They now control two branches of government with a sympathetic Supreme Court (sound familiar?) and have no intention of holding free and fair democratic elections.

 

Maduro has been charged with Narco-Terrorism, Cocaine Importation, Possession, and Conspiracy to Possess Machine Guns and Explosive Devices (most of the charges seem to be for domestic crimes, not international offenses), with possible sentences of 10 years to life. His wife, Cilia Flores is charged with drug and weapons charges, as well as accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to facilitate and protect high-level drug meetings. Both pleaded not guilty at a preliminary hearing in New York. 

 

One of the global strategies in the foreign policy section of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, known as the “Trump Corollary”, is a puffed-up version of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine. In the current form, it promotes restoring U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere’s political, economic, and security frameworks to function for American interests, limiting foreign influence and ownership of key assets (Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the planet & critical minerals), and reducing and eliminating “anti-American” global alliances and institutions.

 

It also calls for a more aggressive militarized approach to regional security, including a war on drug cartels, and targeting deployments to secure borders and defeat international criminal organizations. As well as deterring mass migration, prioritizing reciprocal trade agreements, and incentivizing companies to pull manufacturing out of China and Asia and relocate to the Western Hemisphere.

 

None of this has anything to do with actual American security or eliminating drug trafficking. It is purely to display and exert Trump’s power and line the pockets of his billionaire chums. After losing their oil rights to dictatorial takeovers in Venezuela twice, oil companies are hesitant to even send representatives to inspect long-neglected industry assets, refineries, and pipelines to assess their condition and determine how many years and how many billions would be required to replace or refurbish the equipment and infrastructure supporting those sites. They have indicated that they will not begin that process until Trump’s government can guarantee stout security arrangements for their staff, facilities, and investments.

 

Before the plane carrying the Venezuelan president and his wife touched down on U.S. soil, Trump was threatening more military operations to take control of Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia. The President and Rubio are making public statements about “taking”  Greenland in the “near” future, which would be an attack on the sovereignty of our ally, Denmark. That will also fulfill the isolationist wet-dreams of “America First” arch-conservatives like Russell Vought, Elon Musk, Charlie Koch, and Peter Thiel, by obliterating our seven-decade alliance with NATO.

 

Project 2025, the playbook for Trump’s presidency, explicitly advocated ditching our traditional alliances with NATO and the E.U. in favor of dividing the planet into a “tri-polar” world order, allowing the U.S., Russia, and China to dominate their “spheres of political and economic influence”. The U.S. gets unfettered dominance of the Western Hemisphere, Trump’s buddy Vlad Putin gets a free pass to gobble up Europe and Central Asia, and China has supremacy over the Indo-Pacific nations. All of which mirrors the way George Orwell divided up his fictional world in his novel 1984, published in 1949!

 

In addition, American drones and planes have murdered more than 115 people on boats traversing the Caribbean and the Pacific, which our government claims, without proof, are carrying relatively small shipments of cocaine, rather than having the Coast Guard intercept and inspect them. 

 

In the next phase of illegal and illicit gangster-diplomacy, our Navy has dropped heavily armed Special Forces squads on the decks of at least five Venezuelan and Russian tankers, which are being diverted to U.S. ports, where the vessels will be confiscated and their “illegal” cargo offloaded and sold, in blatant acts of piracy!

 

While Trump was handing Argentina’s President Javier Milei a $40 billion lifeline to support the stabilization of the Argentinian peso and started construction of a $400 billion “ballroom” in place of the demolished East Wing of the White House during the economic trauma of our government shutdown, Americans continue to absorb increases in the costs of food, housing, energy, and tariffs on most imported goods that are forcing hard decisions around kitchen tables across the country.

 

Long-feared (and completely ignored by Republicans) increases in health insurance premiums, some doubling or tripling, are forcing millions to forfeit coverage, hoping they don’t get sick and facing financial ruin if they do. The House of Representatives passed a bill to extend those subsidies for three years, but there is no guarantee that it will pass in the Senate, or that it will be signed into law before people start losing their insurance.

 

One typical example – an upper-middle-class family of four that was paying $1,300 / month will now be paying $50,000 / year for the same coverage. Insurance companies are rushing to offer high-deductible, Catastrophic Health Insurance policies, which are designed for healthy young people, that cover most common medical expenses but come with extremely high deductibles ($10,600 for individuals and $21,200 for families) and caps on coverage.

 

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” cut nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid funding over the next decade, ending incentives for “Medicaid Expansion” in many states, instituting work requirements, and more frequent and exhaustive paperwork to ensure continued eligibility. It specifically defunds Planned Parenthood, which provides comprehensive medical services for millions. As many as 6.3 million individuals will lose coverage initially with millions more being denied in the coming months. Many rural hospitals and nursing homes are already being forced to close.

 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shrank the recommended vaccines for children 17 to 11, moving Hepatitis A & B, Meningococcal ACWY and Meningococcus B, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), Dengue to a “high risk” category, and making Seasonal Flu, Covid-19, and Retrovirus vaccines “optional”. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) condemned the changes and warned of a significant increase in hospitalizations and outbreaks of preventable diseases.

 

Due to catastrophic cuts in their budget, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS  & NPR) is being dissolved. Donations from listeners and philanthropists are helping local stations bridge the gap, but their future survival is in doubt. Say goodbye to Big Bird, fabulous documentaries, and fair and responsible news coverage that provided the only radio or television broadcast option, including weather reports, in many rural areas.

 

The media landscape is being redrawn to replace “responsible journalism” with “conservative” opinion talk shows masquerading as “news” by Trump billionaire supporters and mega-conglomerates.

 

• Relatively unbiased CBS was transformed in a Skydance (David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison) takeover of Paramount in 2025, when conservative operatives were installed in key positions to begin “censoring” news reports critical to the Trump administration.

 

• The Ellison team is maneuvering to take control of Warner Brothers / Discovery, which owns CNN, with the intention of transforming it into a “conservative” network slightly more refined than Rupert Murdoch’s fascist, bombastic News Corp, which broadcasts the Fox “News” Network and publishes the Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, among others. The Murdocks’ corporation paid $784 million in damages for making a corporate decision to lie in support of Trump’s blatantly false claims that the 2020 election had been rigged, but the settlement failed to require the network to stop lying about virtually every story they broadcast.

 

• The Ellisons and Murdocks joined forces to finance the purchase of the American rights to TikTok, which will be transformed into a “conservative-aligned” platform targeting a massive under-30 audience.

 

• We can’t forget Elon Musk’s wild west ‘X’ (Twitter), which promotes hateful and obscene “right-wing content,” and Facebook shifting its algorithms to promote more “conservative” articles and posts. 

 

All of which means that a large portion of information being disseminated over every communications platform in this country is being censored and manipulated to promote “fake Christian” / white nationalist / anti-minority & immigrant / isolationist propaganda to rationalize and normalize extreme and violent divisions in our society.

 

In December, former Special Counsel Jack Smith gave closed-door testimony to the House Judiciary Committee about his investigation into the January 6th riots. The transcript and video were quietly released on New Year’s Eve to limit public reaction. His 8 hours under oath left no doubt that the evidence proves Trump was guilty of trying to overthrow a legitimate election by goading his rabid supporters to “fight like hell” when they reached the Capitol. Republicans are referring to the insurrection, which left almost $3 million in damages to the building, more than 150 Capitol Police Officers in the hospital, five people dead, and several officer suicides shortly after the riot, as a “peaceful protest”. 

 

According to the transcript, Smith said, “The Capitol riot does not happen without Trump.” None of those insurgents would have felt empowered to indulge in acts of horrific violence without prodding from the president, who pardoned almost 1600 convicted felons on his first day in office. Many of those freed have been arrested and tried for violent crimes committed after they were released. Still, thousands of armed vigilantes believe they will not be punished for violent crimes committed in support of Trump’s lunacy in the coming “civil war”. 

 

In 1984, Orwell predicted this administration’s edict, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." The curse of Big Brother is no longer fiction.

 

Thousands of armed, masked, unidentifiable ICE thugs are invading our cities to assault, kidnap, incarcerate, and deport our neighbors and coworkers for the crime of having brown skin or speaking Spanish. Renee Nicole Good, an unarmed woman and American citizen, was murdered by one of Kristi Noem/Tom Homan’s Gestapo goons in Minneapolis while trying to defend her neighbors from ICE harassment by blocking the street with her car. The Trump administration is calling her a terrorist. She was a 37-year-old mother of three who was trying to protect her neighbors.

 

These are just the highlights from the past few weeks, which don’t include Elon Musk’s terror campaign to dismantle the federal government and shed 300,000 dedicated civil servants, the House of Representatives shutting down for 43 days to avoid releasing the Epstein files which probably implicate Trump, the shady business deals with foreign countries and cryptocurrency investments that have benefited his family with billions of dollars, and let’s not forget the $400 million plane he received as a gift from the U.A.E. 

 

There has never been a more corrupt or sordid administration in the history of our country, and he has yet to complete the first year of his term! Feeling emboldened by the lack of any restraints by Congress or the courts, can you imagine the insanity Trump will create in the next three?

 

Unfortunately, deposing Trump results in handing power to bazillionaire and “technocratic monarchist” Peter Thiel’s puppet J.D. Vance, who will launch a “full-scale assault on the foundational values of modern liberalism, representative democracy, the rule of law, civil rights, public opinion, and the separation of powers.” The super-rich want to dispose of democracy and replace it with “a state-as-a-company run by a sovereign CEO, unelected, irremovable, and vested with absolute authority where citizenship is not a political right but a contractual position.”

 

So, Ain’t We Got Fun Yet?

 

There can be no future for our democracy until Trump’s radical MAGA white-nationalists and their technocrat sponsors are removed from positions of power, rounded up, and tried for treason.

 

And that won’t happen until enough Americans are brave enough to take to the streets to demand an end to the nightmare that is Trump. We are well past his expiration date, and the future is in our hands. There is no tomorrow for our country and our society if we don’t act to defend our heritage today.

 

Stand Up! Speak Out! Make a Difference!