Oil's Well That Ends Well

 It's been a week since Donald Trump sent a strike team into Venezeula to abduct their President Maduro and his wife.

Kidnapping and murder in the course of a week? Li'l Donnie, our "law & order" guy, has been busy.

Well, everything is now hunky-dory in good ol' "Venezwayler" since der Führer took over running things. 

SIDE NOTE: the State Department issued a warning to any Americans in Venezuela to get the hell out of the country. We can't guarantee their safety because of roving gangs  of pro-Maduro thugs.

So everything is just great in Venezuela so Donald Trump can...

• Bring democracy to a country ruled by a tyrannical dictator? No, that's not it.
• Stop the flow of narcotics from Venezuela to the United States? Despite all the threats and blowing up fishing boats in the name of stopping the drug trade, turns out that's not the big deal.
• So we can get our hands on all of the oil underneath Venezuela? 

DING! DING! DING! 

We have a winner! 

So Li'l Donnie invited a bunch of oil company executives to the White House to discuss what we'e going do with "our" oil and found those executives less than enthused by what der Führer was selling.

1) These executives are less than assured that the United States has the level of control over the country that Trump claims he has.  

Yeah, we snatched Maduro but his vice president stepped up, was sworn in and now she's the president of Venezuela. Maduro's government is still in charge with just someone different at the top of the food chain.

Also see the side note above about the warning from the State Department.

2) Yeah, Venezuela has a lot of oil but a lot of it is heavy crude which takes more money, time, equipment and (it bears repeating) money to extract and process.  The oil available to be mined in the United States costs less to produce which means more profit. 

There's little profit in Venezuela's oil.

3)  While Donald Trump and his syncophants in the EPA are rolling back fuel standards to get us back to gas guzzlers, the rest of the world has other plans. China, the largest population on the planet, is moving towards electric vehicles.  

Oil is still a valuable and vital commodity but it's slice of the energy production pie is static or even shrinking.  Even oil company executives see that their days on top are numbered and going into another country that is unstable to produce a product the world will need less of makes no sense.  

These exectives will not necessarily say no to Venezuelan oil. Doing business in Venezuela is a sucker bet but if they wring some concessions out of Li'l Donnie like additional tax breaks, more regulatory roll backs and some other 3rd thing, well, THAT might make it worth their while.

Donald Trump is not prepared to accept those realities, still choosing to live in the 1950's when oil was king.  

And if that is not good enough, Li'l Donnie will wander into the future to admire his ballroom.

In the middle of his big meeting with oil executives, Trump got up and ambled over to a window to look out at the rubble pile where the East Wing used to be to marvel at the big beautiful ballroom in all it's golden, marbled spendor that exists only in his mind.

Eventually der Führer returned to his seat to resume.... talking about the ballroom some more. 

By the way, the success of the strike force mission to abduct Maduro has left Trump feeling cocky about taking over some other country.

He's remembered he wants Greenland.

And he's made it clear that military force is an option that's on the table.

SIDE NOTE: Greenland is owned by Denmark who is an ally of the United States and a fellow member of NATO.  Per the NATO charter, an attack on one NATO member is an attack on them all. So try to wrap your head around what would happen if the attack comes from... a NATO member? 

Ally? NATO? Fuck all that! 

Trump aide Nosferatu Stephen Miller says that world runs on force, power and strength and the United States has all that and we can get what we want.  

International law, alliances and treaties are not our problem. We're the biggest, strongest motherfuckers in the world and we can do what we want.

The world feels fractured and uncertain in the wake of Trump's agression and the sickening enablers in his orbit encouraging his worst impulses. 

It feels like the beginning of things just getting worse?

I should try to stay positive, I suppose?

Well, I guess oil's well that ends well.