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3 d

Whoa! Country Singer Slams Christians And Trump Fans In Wild, Lie-Laden Rant Against ICE (Watch)
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Whoa! Country Singer Slams Christians And Trump Fans In Wild, Lie-Laden Rant Against ICE (Watch)

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Living In Faith
Living In Faith
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The Well-Lived Life of Stephen - Greg Laurie Devotion - October 18, 2025
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The Well-Lived Life of Stephen - Greg Laurie Devotion - October 18, 2025

Discover the profound qualities that defined Stephen's remarkable, though brief, life and learn how these attributes can guide you towards a spiritually fulfilling existence.
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LARRY ELDER: What Trump Says To Detractors After Ceasefire
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LARRY ELDER: What Trump Says To Detractors After Ceasefire

look where the ball lands
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Watch Live: Family Research Council's Pray Vote Stand Summit
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Watch Live: Family Research Council's Pray Vote Stand Summit

The Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit 2025 begins on Friday, October 17. This year’s summit is the first to be held on the West Coast at the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino,…
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DNC Chair Says Voters Have Forgiven Jay Jones for Violent Texts, but Polls in Virginia AG Race Say Otherwise
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DNC Chair Says Voters Have Forgiven Jay Jones for Violent Texts, but Polls in Virginia AG Race Say Otherwise

Most Virginians have “accepted the apology” of state attorney general nominee Jay Jones for his disturbing, violent threats about a Republican legislator, a top Democrat is saying. However, recent…
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72 Dead, 48 Missing After Ruthless Flooding In Mexico
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72 Dead, 48 Missing After Ruthless Flooding In Mexico

One week following floods sweeping through huge portions of five states in eastern and central Mexico, the nation’s government has confirmed that 72 people have died, while 48 others are missing. Multiple…
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3 d

We Need Prudence, Not Perfidy, on Venezuela
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We Need Prudence, Not Perfidy, on Venezuela

[View Article at Source]We can be against crusading idealism without borrowing from progressives’ indulgent self-loathing. The post We Need Prudence, Not Perfidy, on Venezuela appeared first on The…
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3 d

Venezuela Regime Change Helps Exxon—not Americans
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Venezuela Regime Change Helps Exxon—not Americans

[View Article at Source]Toppling Maduro’s government would spark regional instability and worsen the migration crisis. The post Venezuela Regime Change Helps Exxon—not Americans appeared first on…
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Conservative Voices
Conservative Voices
3 d

We Need Prudence, Not Perfidy, on Venezuela
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We Need Prudence, Not Perfidy, on Venezuela

Foreign Affairs We Need Prudence, Not Perfidy, on Venezuela We can be against crusading idealism without borrowing from progressives’ indulgent self-loathing. I’m grateful to Jude Russo for taking my piece supporting the Trump administration’s muscular policy toward Venezuela seriously enough to answer it at length—especially given that he had already endured the pain of editing it. His central worry, that my argument risks normalizing executive improvisation, propaganda, and a casual drift toward imperial habit, is not frivolous. On the contrary, anyone who cares about the character of American government should treat those concerns with gravity.  I share, in many respects, the impulse that produces such a critique. If prudence is the conservative virtue par excellence, then skepticism of unaccountable power and of public mendacity is its guardian angel—yes, I’m calling you angelic, Mr. Russo.  But the diagnosis Russo advances flattens two distinct conversations into one: the normative question of how a republic should wield power, and the prudential question of how a republic might—realistically—advance its interests in a dangerous world. My modest claim in the original piece was not that anything goes. Rather, it was that carefully calibrated pressure—I’d add, preferably applied under clear political and legal oversight and disciplined by respect for constitutional norms—can sometimes produce outcomes consonant with American interests. Let me be plain about where I agree with Russo. I do not like lies. I wish our diplomacy could be more straightforward. I share his fear of the historical pattern whereby expansive executive prerogative corrodes domestic liberties and degrades our institutions. He is right to point out that American power, once unmoored from democratic control and legal constraint, tends to metastasize into something ugly and self-justifying. That is a real danger and worth fighting. Yet honesty also demands recognizing the complexity that Russo’s piece largely elides. To fault a serious foreign-policy analysis for acknowledging the inescapable realities of deception is akin to reproaching a man for sinning. If diplomacy never deceives, one must ask: Is it even diplomacy? Statecraft inevitably entails degrees of concealment, selective emphasis, and rhetorical framing. This is not a moral loophole permitting deception for its own sake; rather, it is the historian’s observation that public rhetoric and private calculation often diverge in the service of national survival. Even the Founders, guided by prudence and policy imperatives, sometimes shaped public argument in ways that would strike the modern, literal-minded reader as misleading. Consider a few examples from the republican archive. During the Revolutionary War, Benjamin Franklin, in Paris, exaggerated American prospects to secure French assistance at a moment when the Continental Army was hardly a safe bet. When Washington proclaimed neutrality in 1793, the language appealed to a principle of impartiality. In truth, the fledgling republic was too weak for open war and far too dependent on British commerce; “neutrality” was in great part a form of strategic cover that allowed quiet reconciliation with London. In 1803, Jefferson, who had long insisted the Constitution did not authorize territorial acquisition, nevertheless embraced the Louisiana Purchase and rationalized it as treaty power; privately, he admitted the move strained his own constitutional scruples because the alternative—refusing a vast and strategically vital acquisition—was worse for the nation. These were not cases of small lies for small gains; they were deliberate rhetorical choices undertaken in existential contexts. They were, in a manner of speaking, prudential shading of the truth to achieve a public good. Let me be clear, however: Invoking these examples is not meant to excuse modern abuses. It is to insist that the moral vocabulary of statecraft is more nuanced than a binary of “truth” and “lie.” There are degrees of mendacity, and there are outcomes. There is a stark moral difference between the deception that misleads a people into a catastrophic war on false pretenses and the diplomatic obfuscation that preserves lives and secures national interests without open, bloody intervention. I remain cautiously optimistic that, as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, we are still seeing the latter—Russo doesn’t. I can understand that. What I can’t accept is collapsing those two into the same category, erasing the nuance of political judgment. Russo is right to demand legal clarity and public accountability—and most everyone reading these pages likely concurs, which is precisely why I did not belabor the point. The question that truly deserves asking is this: What should serve as the proper baseline for prudence? Is it reflexive pacifism, an instinctive recoil from any exertion of pressure, or careful realism, which tests means against ends and weighs counterfactuals? My concern is that certain strands of contemporary anti-interventionism on the political right are increasingly borrowing their instinctive restraint from progressive, post-imperial moralism—an admirable critique in its original context—without fully integrating the conservative cautions against strategic neglect. Put differently, opposing interventions out of compassion or fear is not the same as opposing them because they would be strategically imprudent. Both impulses may yield restraint, and both have their place, but they spring from very different soil. Conservative foreign policy should not be guided by ideologues eager to sacrifice lives for resources, nor by those who forfeit material interests to sacrifice their moral impulses. Men need to be good—but they must also eat. I would never suggest that conservatives should grow unthinkingly bellicose. Far from it. What I am saying is that prudence can—and at times must—permit measures short of occupation when they demonstrably reduce threats to American security. To call this “blood for oil” is an easy taunt, but it sidesteps a simple truth: Geostrategy—why we focus here rather than there—and resource access are inseparable parts of statecraft. Russo objects that Washington’s current practice leans too far into secrecy. Point taken. If the administration is systematically misleading Congress to widen its executive ambit—and especially if critics are correct that war itself is the ultimate aim—it should be held to account. Our disagreement here—my relative optimism and his pessimism—stems less from philosophy than from experience. There is also a personal dimension I want to put on the table: the charge, leveled against me, of being unpatriotic—an accusation I dislike but, in some ways, understand. As Russo and I both know, I spent part of my life in Venezuela—a fact he chose not to outright mention, perhaps graciously, though it inevitably gives that charge more sting. I bring this up not to elicit sympathy—that would be futile here—but because it’s a biographical detail the reader deserves to know. It may lessen my argument’s strength in the eyes of some, but it clarifies the spirit in which it’s made. I did not write the piece to soothe foreign patrons I will never serve. I wrote it because I believe—genuinely and uneasily—that a prudent American policy of increased pressure on Venezuela, applied with responsibility, can advance American interests. That I can be accused of putting oil over constitutionality is understandable rhetorical shorthand, but it misreads a difficult judgment for cynicism. As my friends at The American Conservative know, I’ve never been shy about criticizing the influence of exile communities on American decision-making. I’ve even debated Venezuelans on national television, siding with Trump’s immigration policies—and I wrote a piece on this very subject, in this magazine, back before Washington’s tactics toward Venezuela shifted. Russo might have preferred that one. I didn’t write this piece because some Venezuelans would applaud. I wrote it because some essays published in TAC, like this rebuke of María Corina Machado’s Nobel nomination, read less like prudential analysis than lefty apologia. (For those unfamiliar: interviewing Miguel Tinker Salas about Machado would be like interviewing Christopher Hitchens or some other caustic atheist about whether priestly confession is biblical.) I wrote my piece this week—with some hesitation and knowing full well that editors here might disapprove—because I genuinely believe that, if done prudently, America still has much to gain by exerting pressure on Venezuela. My fellow prudence-minded conservatives: For all the common ground we share with our friends on the left when it comes to foreign-policy restraint, our analysis must never draw from an instinctive aversion to power itself. “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” We should not oppose interventions merely out of a disturbed empathy. Our restraint should arise, to a great degree, from sober self-interest. In their fierce refusal to even entertain the idea that U.S. pressure can sometimes serve the good, many of my friends—knowingly or not—are being imprudent themselves. Russo’s warning is salutary; his anxieties about the uneasy seam between statecraft and constitutionalism are justified. Yet we should beware that the fear of abuse does not eclipse the question of how power can be used responsibly. ¿Por qué no los dos? The post We Need Prudence, Not Perfidy, on Venezuela appeared first on The American Conservative.
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3 d

Venezuela Regime Change Helps Exxon—not Americans
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Venezuela Regime Change Helps Exxon—not Americans

Foreign Affairs Venezuela Regime Change Helps Exxon—not Americans Toppling Maduro’s government would spark regional instability and worsen the migration crisis. This week, reports surfaced that President Donald Trump has authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations—including lethal action—inside Venezuela and across the Caribbean, marking a major escalation in a long-running U.S. campaign against President Nicolás Maduro’s government. Trump confirmed the reports on Wednesday and said the administration, which has attacked alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, is “looking at land” as it plans further strikes. Venezuela, like Cuba, has been the target of a decades-long campaign of subversion, sabotage, and economic warfare from the U.S. national security state, highlighted by a maximum pressure sanctions regime which intentionally strangled Venezuela’s economy. The new CIA effort to overthrow the government of Venezuela is therefore merely the latest attempt from the same political alliance between neoconservative foreign policy elites, the security state, and multinational energy corporations who—with allies like Secretary of State Marco Rubio—see the second Trump administration as a vehicle through which they can finally achieve their long-held goal.  Like every other regime change effort of the past 25 years, this one serves no vital American interest. Indeed, regime change efforts in Venezuela have already exacerbated regional instability by fueling the Venezuelan refugee crisis, which by all accounts worsened as a result of the sanctions imposed on that country in 2017. Those sanctions killed thousands of Venezuelans and turned millions more into refugees. A successful regime change war could produce even wider suffering. Ironically, the repeated attempts of the security state and its neoconservative foreign policy planners have bolstered Venezuela’s government, giving former President Hugo Chávez and current President Nicolás Maduro legitimacy among the Venezuelans who oppose foreign intervention in their country. Like his predecessor, Maduro can easily point to efforts by U.S. foreign policy hawks to destroy Venezuela’s economy and overthrow its government as the driving factor behind current economic woes—and some Venezuelans find that excuse to be credible.  The Bush administration’s first attempt to overthrow Chávez through a 2002 military coup failed spectacularly. Chávez’s survival humiliated the CIA and neocon planners who had banked on a swift victory, discounting the power and appeal of the ideology of the Bolivaran Revolution within Venezuela. They should have known better. It is precisely because of Venezuela’s entrenched left-populism—not “drug trafficking,” or the supposed threat of “Chinese influence”—that the U.S. security state, neoconservatives, and oil executives have sought regime change in the country for more than 23 years. A series of leaked emails published by Wikileaks involving Stratfor—the private intelligence firm that contracts with the US national security state—reveals the CIA and National Endowment for Democracy’s various subsequent failed efforts to overthrow the government of Venezuela and install puppet leaders loyal to neoconservative interests in the U.S. yet unknown or rejected by voters in Venezuela.  In a February 2010 internal email published by WikiLeaks, Stratfor analyst Marko Papic briefed colleague Fred Burton on a Soros-style NGO called CANVAS and its potential to bring down the Venezuelan government. Papic described CANVAS as the successor to Serbia’s Otpor opposition movement and noted it was “still hooked into U.S. funding,” with earlier ties to entities like NED, Freedom House, and the Albert Einstein Institute. He characterized CANVAS as an “export-a-revolution” outfit that had “sowed the seeds for a number of color revolutions.” With the backing of the U.S. security state, CANVAS and its offshoots launched various regime change efforts against the Venezuelan government, including a 2010 plot to “take advantage,” of a drought and a subsequent electricity crisis caused by low water levels in Venezuela’s dams—a natural disaster which Stratfor analysts predicted could plunge “70 percent of the country,” into darkness. By forging “alliances with the military,” NED/CIA backed groups could “spin [the crisis] against,” the Chávez government and install a pro-US regime in its place. Though, as even the Stratfor analysts acknowledged, “the past three coup attempts” failed because even though “the military thought it had enough support, there was a failure in the public to respond positively (or the public responded in the negative).”  A 2019 bid to anoint the unelected opposition figure Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s president—endorsed by the Trump administration, Nancy Pelosi, and bipartisan factions of Congress—likewise failed miserably. Rather than an organic internal movement demanding regime change in Venezuela, the same small clique of U.S. neoconservative elites and oil interests have led each effort to topple the government. The neocon official behind the 2002 failed coup against Chávez—Iran-Contra criminal Elliot Abrams—became Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela in 2019 and set out to organize further regime change efforts. As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)—himself a longtime proponent of Soros-style color revolutions and coups around the world—said to Abrams in 2020, “we tried to construct a kind of coup and it blew up in our face when all the generals who were supposed to break with Maduro decided to stick with him in the end.” Perhaps the most aggressive proponent of regime change in Venezuela has been ExxonMobil and think tanks funded by the oil company, mainly the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which frequently hosts conferences with Washington’s various handpicked Venezuelan leaders. Such think tanks advocate maximum pressure sanctions and market regime-change war in Venezuela as “democracy promotion.” As Joseph Bouchard and Nick Cleveland-Stout of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft reported, CSIS is one of 20 DC think tanks funded by Exxon, receiving at least $250,000 annually; the CSIS board of trustees even includes the CEO of Exxon.  CSIS analyst Ryan Berg, who announced last month that he had joined the Trump administration to work with the State Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff on Venezuela, praised the Trump administration’s bombing of accused Venezuelan “narcoterrorists,” which is reminiscent of the NATO strategy which led to the 2011 regime change war in Libya. There is no reason to believe that a regime change war in Venezuela would turn out any better than did the one in that country, where chaos ensued, the slave trade has returned, and millions of refugees have fled, often to Europe. Though if there were a regime change war in Venezuela, the refugees produced from that conflict would likely not flee to Europe—they would come to the United States. Evidently, Exxon is less concerned with immigration flows and regional stability than with oil profits; its current pick to govern Venezuela, María Corina Machado, has vowed to privatize Venezuela’s oil sector and sell its vast resources to multinational companies abroad. As Max Blumenthal reported in The Grayzone, Machado has been plotting to overthrow the government of Venezuela for over 15 years. After winning the Nobel Peace Prize last week—thanks in part to an August 2024 letter nominating her signed by Rubio—Machado has embarked on a press tour promoting U.S. military action to overthrow the government of Venezuela. In a bid to flatter Trump and bring about that outcome, Machado declared on Fox News that the U.S. president should have won the prize instead, dedicating the award to him “because his actions have been decisive to having Venezuela on the threshold of freedom,” i.e., to having Maduro removed from power. Machado has applauded the Trump administration’s extrajudicial maritime attacks on civilian vessels suspected of “narcoterrorism,” though they killed her fellow countrymen.   Whether or not a successful regime change will materialize may depend on an internal battle within the Trump administration between hawks led by Rubio and those favoring de-escalation and diplomacy, represented by special envoy Richard Grenell, who favors negotiations and resource-for-security deals with Caracas. With Trump ordering Grenell to halt his diplomatic efforts—despite recent offers from Venezuela to revive talks and even give the U.S. oil and rare earth exports—Rubio’s approach has won out in recent weeks. The key to Rubio and Exxon’s designs lies next door in Guyana. In March, Rubio traveled there to warn Venezuela not to attack Exxon mobile operations, which currently operate in disputed offshore territory. Exxon’s partnership with Guyana began in 2007 and—though profitable for that company—has ignited tensions between Venezuela and Guyana while leaving the latter country with billions of dollars in oil exploration bills due to a provision in a 2016 deal signed with Exxon mobile which sticks Guyana with the bill for all exploration activities. Exxon’s activities in Guyana reveal not only the oil motivation for regime change in Venezuela but expose as fraudulent many of the propagandistic narratives driving the effort, namely that a military intervention would be about confronting Chinese influence. As Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) pointed out last month, Exxon’s 2016 partnership in the region is not only with Guyana but with China’s state owned oil firm.  That partnership with Exxon has deepened China’s involvement in Latin America as much as any other Belt and Road initiative. Exxon, though an American company, is a multinational corporation and therefore is less interested in the national security agenda of the Trump administration or the national interests of the United States than in its own profits. President Trump campaigned on ending American wars and dismantling the neoconservative foreign-policy establishment that produced them. But by authorizing covert operations in Venezuela, his administration has intensified an old regime-change effort—one that previously failed and may now succeed. If it does, it will not be a victory for Venezuelan freedom or American security but for the same elite interests that have corrupted U.S. foreign policy for far too long. The post Venezuela Regime Change Helps Exxon—not Americans appeared first on The American Conservative.
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