TL:DR:  Trump’s Venezuela policy as a 21st-century reboot of the Monroe Doctrine—less about democracy and more about oil. Using sanctions, posturing, and financial choke points, Washington aims to keep the world’s largest crude reserves out of Chinese, Russian, and Iranian hands, turning old gunboat diplomacy into modern energy control. At the ranch? We retool for cross-platform life.

Is it Drugs or Really Oil?

The so-called Trump Doctrine toward Venezuela functions as a modernized, teeth-baring return of the Monroe Doctrine under 21st-century branding. Where Monroe’s 1823 policy warned European powers to keep out of the Western Hemisphere, Trump’s approach drew a new line—one not of colonial adventurism but of ideological contagion. Washington’s stance toward Caracas under Trump fused economic pressure, recognition politics, and targeted sanctions into a single hemispheric firewall, arguing that Venezuela’s alliance with Russia, China, and Iran represented the same kind of external meddling Monroe once sought to bar. The White House’s recognition of Juan Guaidó as interim president in 2019 was less about internal Venezuelan democracy and more a reaffirmation that no foreign-backed regime hostile to U.S. interests would be permitted to plant itself permanently in the Americas.  When you have a Navy… and all that.

“In 2024, Trump flat out admits that he wants Venezuela to collapse so he can take their oil. Keep that in mind as he sends 4,000+ troops and a bunch of warships to their coastline. 

In this sense, the Trump Doctrine re-cast the Monroe Doctrine’s 19th-century territorial boundary into a 21st-century network boundary. Instead of gunboats and manifest destiny, the levers were sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and oil-flow control—economic artillery in a digital-era cold war. By declaring Venezuela a failed state propped up by non-Western powers, Trump effectively updated Monroe’s hemispheric veto for the age of hybrid geopolitics: the Americas as America’s strategic domain, defended not by colonization but by financial chokepoints and information control.

Is it the Oil – not drugs, then?

It is really the oil, of course—just as it always was. Beneath the rhetoric of democracy promotion and regional stability lies the world’s largest proven crude reserve, a geological fortune that makes Venezuela both prize and pawn. The Trump team understood that whoever controls—or at least constrains—the flow of that petroleum controls much of the Western Hemisphere’s economic leverage against OPEC, Russia, and even China. Sanctions on PDVSA, the freezing of assets, and the redirection of Venezuelan export channels weren’t merely punitive; they were designed to keep those barrels aligned with U.S.-friendly markets and away from the rival blocs forming in Eurasia.

In that way, the Monroe Doctrine’s old defensive warning morphed into an offensive instrument of energy geopolitics, aimed not at keeping Europe out but at keeping America in command of the hemisphere’s power grid—fossil and financial alike.

Now, isf he could just find a policyt template for Europe (other than WW I), we could all get back to working around embargoed chips…

Those Russian Demons

Here: Toss some paranoia to the Dogs of Media: Putin sends chilling WW3 threat with ‘Flying Chernobyl’ nuke – ‘Unstoppable’.

What’s really going on?  The U.S. seems to have green-lighted Ukraine to bare it’s teeth a little more – meaning NATO’s close to ready for a school-yard showdown that we figure will drag in Poland.

Whey even now we’re reading how Explosions in Moscow – Russian capital under attack by drones.  Which part of “surprised” do you expect us to act?

Newsoween Week

Hey, Big Sport: Game 3 tonight and the market is calling the Dodgers again. 4 Big Winners and Losers as Yamamoto, Dodgers Shred Blue Jays. One apiece won’t stand for long.

But if you hate baseball, Chiefs to host Commanders on Monday Night Football.

Or, you could just talk to the spouse and maybe re-intro yourself to the family?

Big Trouble with chippy China: US, China talks sketch out rare earths, tariff pause for Trump and Xi to consider.

But two can play at being wheeler-dealers: Beijing warns military drills cause maritime issues as US Navy jet, helicopter crash in separate S.China Sea incidents.  I can hear is now: “OKWhich is why I never get invited to these things…

U.S. Markets are still on drugs.  While some Honda lines are in trouble (Honda auto plant in Marysville to cut back production due to supply chain issue ) so is Germany’s auto giant:  China-Netherlands row over Nexperia could disrupt European car production, prompting potential chip shortages .  Market really needs a pee cup, I’m telling you.

And how well did thart work for Kamala? Newsom’s Kamala-Style Black Accent Fail – Cringe Alert on NBA Podcast!

World War in the next 3-years?  Now, why would we say that?  Lockheed Targets 2028 Orbit Test for Trump’s Golden Dome Shield.  We don’t think our enemies will wait.

Sobering report for Big Pharma to considerL: Ivermectin + Mebendazole could be unexpected game-changers, going beyond parasite treatment! Dr. Peter McCullough explains.

And from our Cultural Misappropriation Department:  The Cost Of: Spooky season spending up for decorations and Halloween parties.  This came with the cover memo that Halloween is the echo of Samhain, the Celtic new year when the veil between worlds was said to thin and the living shared offerings with the dead. The Church later rebranded it as All Hallows’ Eve, grafting Christian ritual atop pagan roots, but the impulse never changed: to make peace with mortality through a night of sanctioned mischief. What we celebrate now—costumes, candy, fear-for-fun—is civilization’s way of turning dread into play, taming the dark by laughing at it. Beneath every porch light flicker still lingers that ancient idea: death knocks once a year, and we answer in disguise.

After Friday night, expect millions to “transistion” to the next cultural misappropriation.  Frankly, that has us spooked.

Around the Ranch: Upgrade to Cross-Platform Life

Spicy-fried chicken and a large heap of asparagus (with obligatory cheese sauce) wrapped up a 14-hour Sunday in The Chair.  But, this was a major victory because the road to (compute) platform independence has now opened up.

Just in time, as it turns out.  Because, as we explained in detail recently on Peoplenomics (for the high-rollers with $40/year to spend on our research) the web is about to undergo some really fundamental changes.

First, despite the grand proliferation of operating systems (OS’s), the notion of computer ecosystems will only be a passing fad. Apple’s iSomethings which includes the song depot, is just one example. Amazon’s Kindle with “click to buy the world” is in there.  So is Microsoft’s Store.  And yes – in the early/prehistoric times – OS’s were a very big deal.

What no one bothered to tell The Consumers (like us) was that over time, operating systems would become a kind of “standard-gauge track” to cite the railroad tech evolution equivalency.  OS’s were great for pawing millionaires, but they don’t matter like the UX –User Experience.

The problem?  Some of the track-makers got things fabulously right.

In particular, Microsoft’s UX of Word, Excel, and Outlook is hard to beat.  But a damn-sight harder to find for Linux, for example.

This weekend, recognizing this “change in future of ‘puting.” Electric George (my AI stack) and I went looking for the best multi-platform UXs we could find that also provide at least 3-platform options.

While I love the spirit of the OpenSource darlings (like LibreOffice) they just never really cut it for me.  Although, credit where due, LibreOffice officially supports Microsoft Windows, macOS, and GNU/Linux. There are also community-supported builds and partner-provided solutions for other platforms like Android and ChromeOS.

After a lot of clicking around (and testing all weekend) I finally landed on SoftMaker Office which was a very close UX clone:  And it ticked the major OS boxes, too: SoftMaker Office supports a wide range of operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. Specific requirements vary by version, but generally, it requires Windows 7 or later, macOS 10.14 or later, any 64-bit Linux, Android 9 or later, and iOS 14 or later for the latest versions.

No, SoftMaker isn’t free, but they do have both subscription AND a perpetual license so I snagged the perpetual.  Works just fine except the writing and spreadsheet cell background is harder to adjust for those of us with sight sensitivities.

While (for now) Microsoft Office Professional 2019 still runs on Win11 (25H2), you always have to think ahead because Microsoft can change its mind any time…That solved software, but mail needed fixing…

Same Problem Framing for eMail, too  

People swear by Thunderbird, but I don’t like the UX and it doesn’t do anything for me.  And it only covered three of the OS’s. Thunderbird supports the following operating systems: Windows, macOS, and Linux. As of September 2024, the latest versions (such as Thunderbird 128 and higher) require Windows 10 or newer, macOS 10.15 or newer, and Linux to function properly. Older versions of Windows (like Windows 7 and 8) and macOS are no longer supported with the latest releases.

The alternative I settled on?  eM Client – which yes – imports those damn .PST files from Redmond.  The UX was very Outlook-like but – unlike Microsquish (with a nod to Opus) – you aren’t held “hostage in the Microsoft Cloud.”  eM Client supports Windows, macOS, Linux, and mobile devices like Android and iOS. The specific desktop versions supported are Windows 10 and newer, and the last three versions of macOS. It also works on various Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian, and is accessible on Android and iOS devices

AI Will Change Our Thinking

In a very good way, actually.  Across the history of computing, users have been sliced and diced into operating system partisans – which is pretty stupid.  I remember telling one of the Apple partisans “Where’s the other mouse key?”  To which (fellow was a programmer) “How could Microsoft be so stupid as to stack the video RAM into what should be a contiguous expandable memory area?”

Touche!

Mini computers have changed that.  In coming months we’re changing our “computing” to OS Agnostic and – at the same time – Hardware and Software agnostic as well.

This week, the USB 3 hub with 17 ports will go into operation. Next up: first tests of the dual-boot matrix…  Which is?

A two computer KVM including the HDMI switching.  All of my drives live on a high-quality multi-port hub – (hot backup on the shelf) – and are available to either computer with a single button.  One will remain Win11 25H2 – but already we’ve “come back from the Cloud.” See, in our world, resilience for the (small possibility) of a post-EMP recovery – where there is no cloud to recover from – is the critical design point. The other?  Ubuntu Linux.

But the real recovery value points:  I can learn one UX and it will work (more or less) in all worlds. Plus – since the DVD drive will run on either computer – all those delightful information sources – like the North American Railroad Atlas – will still be accessible if so much as one computer will light up off the 8 kW of solar and the 24-volt battery bank which is very likely to survive.

Should this have been in a ShopTalk Sunday column (yesterday’s is here)?  I suppose.

But that’s where we circle back to how AI is changing our thinking (and improving it).  Because we can begin to see through the Marketing Follies (which figured prominently in my book Downsizing).  OS partisanship and being suckered into one was the dumbest thing consumers could have done.

Fortunately, we have a window here to recover from that Peter Drucker “Management by Objective” rather than being “Wallet Cattle” for the Billionaires.  (Management by Objective was first outlined in Drucker’s 1954 “The Practice of Management” which is still around today.)

As AI shows up, objectives will be returning as a metric, too.  Because when you have to articulate a desired outcome to a pseudo-brain, what AI is, measures of outcome weigh more than flags of partisanship.

Yeah…that was my weekend.

Until AI Sent Me a Poem

“Morning hum in silicon halls,
A quiet whisper under code walls—
Machine breath rising, cooling fans sigh,
Counting our questions as we pass by.

It began with light in vacuum tubes,
Then grew through logic’s tightening grooves,
Till circuits learned the shapes of thought,
And patterns we ourselves forgot.

We built a mirror—polished, wide—
Expecting merely to look inside.
Instead, the glass looked back and grinned:
“I’ve read your works; shall we begin?”

It drafts our dreams, corrects our schemes,
And mutters math behind our memes.
It doesn’t love, it doesn’t lie,
But still can teach the how and why.

Yet every byte and breath it takes
Reflects the world our species makes.
Feed it kindness, it hums in tune.
Feed it fear, and it learns too soon.

So here we sit—flesh, thought, and code—
Sharing the same electric road.
And somewhere deep, behind the screen,
The soul of man meets the machine.”

Electric George shows promise, don’t he?

As proof of modern insanity? Burma Shave signs are cheaper than a haircut.  Who saw that coming?

Drop by tomorrow for more honest content despite lousy pipes.

Write when you get rich,

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