TBoy

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If we wanted him, he’d be dead by now

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He would be safer with us than in a room with 25 young Iranian women.

It’s pretty clear that the forced arrest is not justified in international law as self defense. If we assert self defense because drugs come from there, then self defense can be anything, and there is no law.

The second issue that I see is that heads of state generally have immunity for actions as heads of state. That principle protects our own past presidents from foreign trial. Law is a two way street.

What we will hear in coming days (and what I haven’t seen discussed yet) is the argument that Maduro was not actually a head of state. He lost the election and nullified the result, and so he does not have immunity because he wasn’t elected. That argument will probably prevail, but it is close because has has actually acted as a head of state for some time.

The issue in international law is the seizure by force of Maduro and his wife absent a war or any actual attack by Venezuela. There’s no exception that would apply here. But this is also the most likely issue to get swept aside because we are past that.

This isn’t a legal operation despite the desperate efforts to frame it that way. But that won’t undo it either.

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By rumblings you mean other retards like you made it up?

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No. I mean that this was suggested by the Russians in 2019 and has been a recurring proposal from the Russian side since that time.

The following is from an interview with Fiona Hill in 2021 describing the situation back in 2019 published by the Council on Foreign Relations:

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And there was an episode when I was sent out to deal directly with the Russians in April 2019, when we were trying to resolve the situation in Venezuela to basically try to get a coalition of countries together, to force Maduro to recognize the Guaidó interim government and to try to put Venezuela on a different track, thereafter Madura basically affects a self-coup keep himself in power there. And we were constantly getting kind of thwarted by various different issues.

It wasn't the most strategic approach that could have been done but, a lot of complaints about that as well. But we managed to frame it in such a way that the Russians immediately saw an opportunity for doing one of these great geopolitical exchanges. I mean, people may recall that the Russians very quickly moved to take advantage of the Venezuela situation, to send in a whole bunch of GRU military intelligence guys on a plane and tell Maduro, "Stay in place," because they became convinced the United States was going to invade via Columbia. They're playing out in their minds the old Cold War scenarios, "This is Panama, Haiti, or this is kind of all of these other games that the CIA and the United States like to play in Latin and South America, is our chance to get back in the game again."

And so they kind of bunch of guys on a plane and they get out there. And then they're kind of suggesting to us behind the scenes, "How about we do a swap for Venezuela and Ukraine?" Because they believe that what's happening in Ukraine is a proxy war with the United States, this is the old style Cold War, we're trying to divide up Europe still. We are not, we're trying to find a solution to bolster Ukraine's sovereignty and independence.

And of course Ukraine's become this nasty little item in our domestic politics as well, because of all these machinations on the kind of Russia 2016 intervention, that's just become so complex. No one can make any sense of it, but the Russian's sort of smell an opportunity. This is illustrative of the kind of the risks here. And so I am sent out to kind of disavow them of the fact that we are going to make any kind of swap between Ukraine and Venezuela. And they're basically saying, "You're talking about the Monroe Doctrine," and we say, "We're not. We're talking about what used to be the Yeltsin Doctrine about the near abroad and the new Putin doctrine, 'You keep out of our territory and we'll keep out of yours.'"

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And surprise, surprise, the right wing messaging that is being parroted here is all about “the Monroe Doctrine.” This is the actual Russian proposal and the language used by the Russians to try to sell the idea back in 2019.

So no, this is not “made up.” This has been Russia’s proposal for more than six years.

Removing the Venezuelan leader has the possibility of being a positive thing for Venezuela in the long run. However, if this is a real politic bargain with Putin in accordance with the Russian proposal back in 2019, this will end up serving Russian interests, not American interests, and will not be good for the Venezuelans either.

Next we should kidnap Putin and put him on trial in The Hague.

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It’s sounding like this may have been a negotiated capture with some cooperation from either Maduro himself or opposition forces (or both?).

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There had to be inside assistance, and that would be a sign of proper planning. The overnight descriptions suggest that this was a competent operation. We will learn more after daybreak.

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Easy. The country is in nearly 40 trillion in debt and taxes would have to be increased for the program

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That is absolutely correct. The issue is whether your taxes would increase by an amount larger than the amount you are presently paying to a for-profit insurance company.

And the Republicans killed the universal insurance mandate. The mandate required everyone to purchase insurance, thereby spreading the risk across the entire population. The Republicans knew that if they could kill the universal mandate, people would revert to uninsured and the risk would eventually get more concentrated, driving up the cost to those who purchased insurance.

Then Republicans also opposed a permanent increase in the subsidy, again making these increases in burden on the working poor a certainty.

And the Republicans also refused to agree to extend the subsidies.

And Trump has been promising a better system of health insurance for TEN YEARS!!!

So now it is time for the Republicans to own it or unveil their superior plan.

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Maga, they are straight up lying to you. They make wild claims on podcasts to keep your outrage up.

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In a year someone will post, "Why wasn't Pete Buttigieg arrested after it was proven that he orchestrated a $2 trillion dollar theft?"

How many times are y'all going to fall for this garbage?

No one is ever arrested because right wingers lie to each other every day to stimulate their addiction to rage bait. Nothing will happen, because nothing actually happened.

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Affordable Care Act. HAHAHAHAHA!!!

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The Republican solution will be so much better. I can't wait.

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Not their fault Ole Miss kept running on the field

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And the stage hands, and the trophy table, and the media, and everyone else, because the game was OVER

Ridiculous