123 Comments
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Richard Luthmann's avatar

The New York Times frame practically writes itself: Trump hates foreign aid, yet America helped Venezuela. Wrong. Trump hates waste, graft, dependency rackets, and Democrat-aligned NGO pipelines masquerading as compassion. There is a difference between emergency disaster relief and laundering billions through international aid bureaucracies that never seem to solve anything except the payroll needs of professional humanitarians. Venezuela shows the distinction. Use the State Department. Use the military where it adds logistics, lift, medical capacity, and command structure. Use trusted charities. Use private-sector transport. Keep the footprint lean. Avoid the Haiti-style confusion. And do not pretend ending USAID meant America stopped helping people. It meant the old racket lost its badge. That is not isolationism. That is competence.

Cookie McCall's avatar

or as The Fonz would say - correct-a-mundo!

Sam Prentice's avatar

I really wish that just like the great Fonz, that the New York Times will finally provide the last straw that demonstrates them jumping the shark.

Shoveltusker's avatar

Absolutely nailed it.

One of the great tragedies of our time is that so many people have all of their info about the world curated, framed, and spun for them by the NYT, NPR, and Heather Cox Richardson.

I live and work among these people, and all four of my sisters are similarly benighted. It's impossible to talk politics with any of them, because they believe very fervently that they are well-informed.

Jerry from Chicago's avatar

USAID was following the "Rule of Organizations". Over time they become more and more liberal only until someone (Trump) resets them back into their original purpose. This happened because we let bureaucrats make decisions.

Shoveltusker's avatar

And another rule: the organization becomes run by people whose priority is gaining and keeping power, privilege, job security, and wealth. Any organizational mission beyond that is entirely secondary.

Nemesis45ever's avatar

Cheats migrate to the govt to skim money like salmon to spawn. Bureaucrats dont know anything of value. Rubio's method of using the American military and private charities is best

Julie Caprera's avatar

Thank you for reporting on real Americans, led by competent leaders in Marco Rubio and the US military, doing what real Americans do best—humbly helping others in very challenging times, saving lives, and not enriching themselves thru grift accompanied by media grandiosity.

MLR's avatar

“Rather than praising the administration’s efforts, the New York Times reported, “U.S. Mobilizes for Venezuela Despite Trump’s Disdain for Foreign Aid.”

Perfectly consistent with the NYTIMES role as the DSA’s mouthpiece vomiting up its fifth column like hate America agitprop.

EODMom's avatar

When someone - anyone - complains about the US being on the ground in Venezuela all you have do to is ask “Who else showed up with anything useful or needed? Who else is doing anything at all?”

ron's avatar

europeans, canadians, demoncrats, etc., are loudly criticizing, but, as usual, we are the only ones there in force.

Suzie's avatar

Actually, a whole host of countries are helping from around the world. Not at the scale we are, of course, but it has been a very international effort.

Sam Prentice's avatar

Mentioning the Clinton Foundation's "efforts" in Haiti leaves me in wonderment about how this woman has lived a very public life of crime with absolutely no consequences of account. Starting with her dishonesty as a Watergate lawyer investigating Nixon, to her Rose Law Firm days of chicanery and outright fraud, through her years of leading the Bimbo eruption fixer squad, to her using a private server in her residence as a drop box for secreting classified info to her patrons in exchange for their "donations" to the Clinton foundations, and on and on. She has some kind of protection around her and I don't think it is of the spiritual kind.

Cookie McCall's avatar

Then there's also that time she got our Ambassador and others killed through some of her shenanigans and incompetence

Sam Prentice's avatar

"Operation Zero Footprint" or also known as Benghazi. Where Clinton and Obama were trying to recapture the illegal weapons they provided to Muslim terrorists so they could redistribute them to their new terrorist friends in Syria (who incidentally became what we know as ISIS, including a nice photo op of John McCain posing with five of what would become the top leaders of ISIS). What a crew our Deep State team is/was.

Suzie's avatar

The State Department, pre-Marco, had been the most vile den of vipers for decades upon decades, enabling incomprehensible levels of crimes and corruption to occur here and around the world. Cleaning out that department as Rubio has done has done more to setting the world right than almost any other accomplishment of this administration. It is almost incalculable.

WTPuck's avatar

And may he be there long enough to finish the job.

Cookie McCall's avatar

Thank you Sam for reminding me of those details. Clinton and Obama are both evil people

WTPuck's avatar

I don't think it was incompetence. They deliberately let those men die to cover up their illegal gun-running. And there would have been more deaths if not for Woods' and Doherty's efforts.

Sam Prentice's avatar

The movie 13 Hours of Benghazi is very good and really provides a very accurate accounting of what transpired. But it does tend to be very upsetting and makes me realize how much I despise Obama and Hillary. Pure, unadulterated, evil.

Suzie's avatar

Because she can name names, dates, times, places and accounts. She’s got all the receipts on everyone and everything. She’s also more than willing to pay oodles for silence. That’s her wall of protection.

What surprises me is how no one has ever tried to “off” her. I can’t imagine that she’s never rubbed an awful lot of people the wrong way.

Sam Prentice's avatar

The Clintons always seem to have their names associated with the people who have worked for them and are no longer with us. It is a very extensive list of names of people who found themselves on the outs with Bill and Hill and sadly are now kicking up daisies. So many added to this list they call them Arkancides.

Valoree Dowell's avatar

You do know George, right?

TeaPartyGal's avatar

I'm not tracking on the allusion--George who?

Marlene Swann's avatar

Letitia James must have learned her great lawyerly skills from Hillary… just saying’!

Albert P. Sweeney's avatar

It’s of the demonic kind. There is a special place in Hell for people like her.

Reddog's avatar

Easy answer, she’s a Democrat.

Retirednottired's avatar

As the Church Lady would say, “Could it be…SATAN??”

William Coulter's avatar

Gee, if only Hillary and Bill could use some of the graft money leftover from Haiti to help. But not a word from either of them.

Did China help? They seem to want to be there not so long ago.

When disasters strike the US has always been willing and more importantly able to help.

Leonard Wechsler's avatar

She would probably say "Venezuela, who?" Maybe then take a shot of tequila since, well Mexico is somewhere around Venezuela, isn't it? Then after finding out it's more than 2000 miles away, she'd drink another shot.

And the NY Times would call her brilliant and BS-NOW would celebrate her work on a days-long celebration. She might even be nominated for a Nobel Prize for her comment.

Dave Slough's avatar

Love the BS NOW moniker

Fits nicely

Daniel Wojcik's avatar

"Venezuela? That's the real name of the drummer from Cheap Trick".

Sam Prentice's avatar

She'd be awarded the Nobel Prize just for thinking about it.

Big Dog 333's avatar

BS-NOW, Great acronym. Can’t wait to Jen “the Red” Psaki’s next ass suck-up interview. Actually I will only see excerpts if Fox runs them!

steph_gray's avatar

Your cat woulda made my cat laugh at that last option. 🤣

(But not today because we are at a bluegrass festival.)

Don Surber's avatar

Picking and grinning.

Shrugged's avatar

Very nice piece. It made me realize I really miss Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story".

Don, when you aren't vicariously being Andy Rooney, perhaps you can throw in some Paul Harvey . . .?

Don Surber's avatar

One of a kind. I used to do a perfect mimic. The key to that last Goodday was short good (gu) and a lift in the voice at the end almost like a question

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

You are his heir Don. Royko too (minus the lefty-left stuff)

It’s your destiny

Cookie McCall's avatar

I loved listening to Paul Harvey as I was driving home for lunch, which was frequent since my hometown was small. Mother and I would frequently walk across the street to the cafeteria and then on the way back home would do a little shopping at our favorite shoe store! Good memories from the early '60's

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

Compare & contrast this recovery with the Vargas/La Guira mudslides which happened in 1999. Hugo Chavez refused help from us -- as a result, ~50,000 died. Hugo Chavez refused offers of help from the US because of his ego. A great tragedy, some would call it a crime against humanity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vargas_tragedy

Roger Tall's avatar

Who are you and what have you done with Dindu?

Retirednottired's avatar

Chavez himself was a crime against humanity. We should have taken him out like Maduro, except at that time the USA lacked a President with balls.

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

I can remember the stories, all of which I believe, of El Loco Hugo shipping pallets of cash to that stupid jackass Evo Morales plus to leftists in Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Brasil, and, of course, Cuba

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

Evo Morales’ IQ has got to be a negative number

Jim Miller's avatar

Wait!! Did not Obama have basketballs?

Albert P. Sweeney's avatar

The more the NYFishwrapper bloviates, the more we see Our current Administration as unflappable.

PDJT does not “hate” foreign aid as they suggest, although he probably hates how it’s been handled by the past and current crop of grifters.

And now he has proven to us all that USAID was nothing but a GRIFT AND A SCAM.

That’s why they are seething.

Let’s face it, the newspaper industry is dead. They write for themselves and their self-aggrandizing brethren. They do not report news, they push opinion, and rarely, if ever, are they on the right side of things. (Pun intended).

President Trump has an awesome team that does what needs to be done. I am betting the people of Venezuela are chanting USA-USA-USA!!!

They damn sure ain’t screaming for Chavez or Clinton or Obama or Brandon.

May GOD Almighty continue to bless and protect President Donald J. Trump and these United States of America!

APS

Cookie McCall's avatar

I seem to recall that Bill & Hillary Clinton profited (grifted) greatly from the Haiti earthquake

Brian LeMay's avatar

The seed money for the Clinton Foundation I believe .

Shrugged's avatar

Poll: "How would Kamala have handled Venezuela?"

We'd still be listening to her word salad babble and struggling to make sense out of any of it.

Reddog's avatar

Someone should have Harris explain the Richter scale.

Valoree Dowell's avatar

Richter looks too close to Righter. She’d have averted her eyes for safety.

Dennis Howell's avatar

After the Haiti quake my Rotary club acquired rights to a simple, inexpensive, water filter sized for a single household. Safe drinking water is a priority after such a disaster, ESPECIALLY in a shithole like Haiti. We paid for two of our members to go there and work with authorities to distribute the divices, set up a factory to produce them in large quantities, and train Haitians to produce them. Big disaster respnse organizations tend to spend far too much on such production facilities, producing overly complex water purification units that will be junk in 5 years because the natives won't know how or spend the effort to maintain them.

Our two members were astounded at the level of corruption in the Haitian gubmint. Before setting up the factory they had to bribe serveral gubmint officials to get permits. The two fairly liberal businessmen came home with a new outlook.

Valoree Dowell's avatar

Thank you.

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

Look up ‘General Burp’ and see what they did to Coca-Cola

So much bass-ackwards about that place

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

Good morning y'all.

Vzla used to be such a fun place to visit.

I lived there, briefly, before Chavez.

Shrugged's avatar

Many US businesses had sales offices there which had to close under Chavez.

Roaring Chicken's avatar

Heinz had a good sized subsidiary in Venezuela (before they strangled our operations via strict control of currency exports and then expropriating it). Back in the 1980's, when our US employees would visit the factory, they would wait for a critical mass of people going from the airport to form as convoy to that area to try to keep the banditos away.

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

It was beyond feral

Dindu Nuffin's avatar

Look up ‘General Burp’ and see what they did to Coca-Cola

So much bass-ackwards about that place

Great food & beautiful women though

James Mead's avatar

Good column Mr. S.

This is what foreign aid & humanitarian charity is supposed to look like & act.

Not gay cross dressing in Uganda.

Don Surber's avatar

Especially after Mamdani