Tick, Tick, Tick -- Maduro On The Brink? Drudge Banner -- January 23, 2019

Updates

Later, 12:34 p.m. Central Time: why I love to blog. Earlier today I posted the note below about Venezuela -- foreshadowing what I thought was going to be a breaking story soon. Now this from a very, very good source over at twitter. The source has an unusual hash-tag and an interesting way of "crowd-sourcing" a hashtag. I use that same hashtag when tweeting about the Bakken, #OOTT:

This is big.

Trump recognises Venezuela opposition leader Guaido as interim leader, says will use "full weight of US economic and diplomatic power" to pursue restoration of Venezuelan democracy.

Comment: you may remember Guaido from some years ago:

Comment: how long would it have taken a cautious politician to have made this decision. I think that another president might have made at least a dozen speeches on the situation and might have waited six months to a year to see how things played out before going bigley.

Next: sanctions on Venezuela. Do you think the White House is in contact with the CIA?

Chaos: for a White House that everyone says is so disorganized, it certainly seems to run "good enough." 

SOTU: at the same time, the president has told he will keep the "contract." Pelosi invited him to give the SOTU address in early January; she did not specifically deny him from coming to Congress; she just recommended that due to safety concerns, he should not come to Congress. Trump says "a contract is a contract" and the "contract" was Pelosi's letter inviting him. Doesn't sound like a disorganized White House at all.

Disorganized? Same day as all this is happening, it's easy to forget that the first story of the day is that the White House has nominated 51 for judges. That story was the headline story earlier this morning; it's not even on the front page any more.

Original Post

Road-to-Venezuela, tag here. Maduro on the brink? -- Drudge Report headline banner. Apparently if the UN won't step in to settle human rights issues, US VP Pence will. Amazing what the CIA can do when asked nicely. Trump simply mentioned in passing, "sanctions on Venezuela." Within days, the Drudge banner: "Maduro on the brink?"

Road-to-Germany: from oilprice --

The planned closure of all nuclear reactors in Germany by 2022 means that Germany needs to retain half of its coal-fired power generation until 2030 to offset the nuclear phase-out.

Germany ordered the immediate shutdown of eight of its 17 reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, and plans to phase out nuclear power plants by 2022.
The phasing out of all nuclear power in Germany means that Europe’s largest economy needs to keep half of its coal-fired generation for another decade and possibly extend the deadline for completely phasing out coal.

“No other country getting out of coal is also getting out of nuclear power,” [according to a spokesperson].

Road-to-2020: there was a snippet somewhere today suggesting that Kamala Harris was filling her FTEs with Hillary staffers. If accurate that speaks volumes. Several factoids:

• Kamala Harris hiring Hillary staffers
• CNN has "gone with" Kamala
• Hillary has not been heard from for several weeks; amazingly, almost nothing during the government shutdown; no photo ops (of course, she has flip-flopped on this issue so often, probably doesn't have more to say)
• although we don't know yet, but it appears that the "evenings with Bill and Hill" tour will be a huge failure; the Houston event was postponed due to the death of Bush I; the next date is April 11, 2019, NYC

Road-to-amnesty: It looks like I'm wrong. I thought the narrative would move from "the wall" to "right-sizing the government" but it now appears the far right could lose big time. There is talk of "the wall" morphing to "all-out amnesty." In exchange for "the wall," Jared and team are willing to consider green cards for DACA/dreamers. It's the right thing to do but only if the wall is secure and laws are changed regarding "one foot on US soil" and "anchor babies." Waiting for Ann Coulter.