January 3, 2026

BEN “LONESOME” RHODES HAS A SAD:

FLASHBACK: Former Obama Official Ben Rhodes Can’t Bring Himself To Give Trump Credit For Israel-Hamas Deal.

During his time at the White House, Rhodes was one of Obama’s closest advisors and masterminded the public relations push behind the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He told The New York Times in 2016 that he “created an echo chamber” of experts who would feed reporters positive analyses of the deal. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say,” Rhodes stated.

Rhodes was a strident critic of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reportedly earning himself the nickname of “Hamas” in the White House. In his 2019 book The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House, Rhodes wrote that Israel was “driven by the settler movement and ultra-Orthodox emigres” and that Netanyahu used “political pressure within the United States to demoralize any meaningful push for peace, just as he used settlements as a means of demoralizing Palestinians.”

As Lee Smith wrote at the beginning of 2020: Obama Passed the Buck. Trump Refused to Play. “The Iran deal was never meant to stop Iran from building a bomb—it was supposed to delay it until disaster happened on someone else’s watch.”

But does the husk of another former Obama operative have any thoughts on this matter (or any thoughts at all)?

UPDATE: Another Obama official has a serious case of amnesia:

Posted at 12:50 pm by Ed Driscoll

ED MORRISSEY: Trump Captures Maduro, Wife; Both Face Trial in New York.

Nicolas Maduro could have left like Bashar al-Assad. Instead, he chose the Manuel Noriega option – an option he apparently never considered.

Overnight, Donald Trump ordered special forces into Caracas, backed by strikes on Venezuela security assets, and captured Maduro and his wife. Trump announced the capture on Truth Social, along with a presser to be held in a couple of hours:

The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The announcement came shortly after John’s overnight post, when news of the attack on Caracas first emerged. At the time, John noted that “no one knows where Maduro is,” which apparently was almost literally true. The Venezeulans at that time had no idea that Maduro and his wife had been captured and removed.

No word yet on when Judge Boasberg will order Maduro’s release. And as Ace writes, “This is a sad day, per Tucker Carlson. Why, the parade of paid Venezuelan spokesmen he ‘interviews’ on his propaganda show say that the narcoterrorist communist dictatorship of Venezuela is secretly very ‘conservative!’”

“And he pushes obvious lies like this because 1, he’s paid to, and 2, he thinks his audience is actually so stupid they are diagnosably learing disabled (yes that was an intentional mispelling) and he has absolutely zero respect for his Pay Pigs who he assumes will believe literally anything as long as it’s wrapped in ‘anti-establishment’ tissue paper.”

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

Posted at 12:36 pm by Charles Glasser

UKRAINE’S REAL SUPERPOWER: LEARNING AND BUILDING FASTER THAN REALITY CHANGES. “Ukraine is not winning the drone race because it found one brilliant design, it is winning because it built a ruthless innovation loop where reality at the front instantly reshapes what gets built next.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

I DUNNO, I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE WERE AT “2025” IN “2015”:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Stephen Green

BIG CHANGE FROM HIS LOSER PREDECESSORS:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DON’T FORGET DRUG DEMAND: Family Research Council President Tony Perkins reserves judgement about the Maduro operation but reminds everybody that the drug problem is two-fold. Capturing Maduro strikes a blow on the supply side, but don’t forget the reality that there is a huge demand in the U.S.

Posted at 11:58 am by Mark Tapscott

NOT A WORD IN THE MSM ON THE IRAN PROTESTS: Richard Pollock, who knows the MSM from the inside as a former “Good Morning America” producer, notes the total silence of the Establishment “media” on the growing protests in Iran.

Posted at 11:08 am by Mark Tapscott

CONFUSION TO OUR ENEMIES:

It’s quite possible we had inside assistance from the Chinese. With all those Chinese students being sent to the US over the past 20 years, we must have turned quite a few of them. We hear about Chinese penetrating American institutions, but penetration goes both ways. Or maybe Maduro screwed over the Chinese government, and this is sub rosa payback.

UPDATE:

Posted at 10:47 am by Glenn Reynolds

IN RE VENEZUELA:

Posted at 10:46 am by Charlie Martin

LEFTISTS WILL SUPPORT ANYONE WHO HATES AMERICA AND THE WEST:

Posted at 9:47 am by Glenn Reynolds

POWERLINE, OTHER INDIES REPORTED MINNESOTA SCANDAL YEARS AGO: When you dig into the past decade of coverage by independent media like the Powerline blog and multiple other Minnesota-based operations, it becomes clear the Mainstream Media purposely ignored the Somali benefits fraud scandal the costs of which are now estimated at $9 billion.

Posted at 9:40 am by Mark Tapscott