Badass in Chief

“Pretending that 'America First' means 'I only care about my house, not my neighborhood' is as retarded as it sounds.” - Jesus Enrique Rosas

By James Howard Kunstler - January 5, 2026

The capture of Nicolás Maduro is driving the Lefty-left batshit crazy for a very good reason: it portends the extinction of their financial life-support, since Señor Maduro used his country as a money laundry for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, in turn, cartel drug money, to funnel gazillions through Cuba to America’s Democratic Party and its political satellites. Not even George and Alex Soros can fill that hole.

For a nearly failed state, Cuba has been able to exert undue influence on US political life through the decades. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles was trained-up in Marxist revolution there in the 1970s and traveled to Cuba many times during her stint in Congress. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal dropped into Havana during the last election year. NGOs such as the Center for Democracy in the Americas act as distribution nodes for money that comes through Cuba and supports Lefty-left activists around the USA. Don’t be surprised if a lot of this laundered money ended up in the bank accounts of US congresspersons and senators, too. Remember this when you watch them howl on your screens.

Alas, Communist Cuba is about to expire of strangulation. Cuba has depended on Señor Maduro’s oil since the Soviet Union dissolved, and now that the supply is cut off, the island nation enjoys only a few hours-a-day of electricity. Soon it will be dark there. . . and things political start stirring and moiling in the dark. Odds are they won’t shake out so well for los communistas. So, that’ll be two down with a few more to go. Anyway, the Castro brothers are long gone and the old charisma with them. The current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, is a nobody.

Of course, this Maduro caper raised the larger question for the American Lefty-left: what part of the Monroe Doctrine don’t you understand? Granted, it’s old. James Monroe was only our fifth president. But even back then it was obvious that the Western Hemisphere would be the USA’s sphere of influence, and this was our way of apprising foreign powers of the fact to avert trouble. It was a pretty sound and sturdy policy, too — though there certainly was much complaint about our heavy-handedness down south over the years. . . the United Fruit Company, and all.

It had become obvious, as Mr. Trump and Secretary Rubio explained over the weekend, that Venezuela under Sr. Maduro had become a platform for nefarious adventurism by America’s adversaries, especially the CCP, which was very active all around South America prepping various countries to join its “Belt and Road” initiative, which is to say its proposed global colonial resource network (a.k.a. empire). The day before he was snatched, Sr. Maduro had a visit with CCP emissaries. China had all kinds of deals going in Venezuela, especially for oil.

The oil is obviously a big part of the picture. But it’s a little more complicated than might appear superficially. Before Sr. Maduro, President Hugo Chávez seized the assets of ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips in 2007 and then reneged on compensation. The nationalized oil industry, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), entered a long and disastrous production decline, from 3.5-million barrels-a-day to about 1-million in 2025. The equipment is ancient and PDVSA has lost most of its technical expertise. Here’s why Mr. Trump is so hot to revive production there:

Venezuelan oil is generally heavy oil. America needs heavy oil because US shale oil, which is about 64 percent of total US output, is extra light, mostly gasoline. American oil refineries, built long ago, are calibrated for heavier oil. For years, the US has had to import heavy crude to mix with our shale oil to produce an adequate supply of heavier distillates, especially diesel and aviation fuel, which are critical to the US economy.

The play you’re hearing about now, is mainly the Maracaibo Basin. It doesn’t mean that America is going to rob Venezuela of its oil. You are likely to see pretty equitable arrangements between returning US oil companies and Venezuela. The US doesn’t need yet another communist revolution there. If more oil gets produced, both Venezuela and the US will be better off for a while — though you might also keep in mind that US shale plays are entering decline, and the decline is liable to be swift because of Permian Basin well profiles.

The other part of this oil story is the celebrated Orinoco oil sands, touted to be the greatest oil reserves in the world, equal to reserves of all global conventional oil. This is separate from Maracaibo and there are some big problems with it. These are super-heavy tar sands. They do not gush out of the ground. They have to be coaxed out with a lot of heat and other technical tricks that tend to be super-expensive. The oil sands also happen to be in jungle, a very difficult place to work, especially from a disease standpoint. Prepare for some degree of disappointment over the Venezuelan oil sands bonanza, no matter how vast.

Sr. Maduro heads into court in Manhattan this morning to . . .

[SNIP]