ETTD

For decades Americans in Republican counties have died sooner than those living in Democratic ones

Now they’re dying faster than they’re being born

These are policy choices pic.twitter.com/hBgUC4WNzE

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) September 26, 2026

There’s a correlation here, but undoubtedly some causation, too. Either way, it eventually becomes so apparent you have to pay attention and reconsider your choices. Recognizing the demographics is difficult, but other issues are as hard to see, too; mostly because these issues are complicated; and Trump is a simple-minded man.

Consider Venezuela’s oil. Start with the claim that the Pentagon is vested with ownership of the oil. The idea is to reassure oil companies that America is protecting the oil fields of Venezuela so the companies will send people back in to work there. But there’s more to it than that. The question of security in the field is real; but what about the security of the investment? Oil production is a long term project, and a long term investment. So how does the American government have an ownership interest? The answer from the administration is: the Pentagon. But is it?

The Pentagon ownership has been one of the most puzzling parts of the deal, because the idea that the Department of Defense could own more than a third of a Venezuelan oil company, or any oil company, would have been unthinkable in any previous US administration. Prior to Trump, the defense department had never operated like a private equity fund that could directly own percentages of foreign companies.

But the Pentagon has been transformed. The OSC is under the authority of the deputy defense secretary, Stephen Feinberg, a powerful billionaire who wields the real financial power in the Pentagon and has surrounded himself with former employees from the private equity giant Cerberus, as the Guardian has reported. Feinberg installed a former Cerberus employee, David Lorch, as the head of the OSC.

The Trump administration is using a 1950s law called the Defense Production Act to allow the Pentagon to become a kind of giant investment fund. “It has turned them into a vehicle for ownership of substantial domestic and international companies,” said the former official.

A former Pentagon official familiar with the project said Feinberg and Lorch structured the financial end of Trump’s Venezuela deal. “It is absolutely a Feinberg project,” said the former Pentagon official.

However, the law that created the OSC actually didn’t authorize it to make equity investments, and the Pentagon’s spokesperson told Reuters: “The Office of ​Strategic Capital (OSC) ⁠does not take equity stakes in private companies” in August.

“Congress clearly doesn’t believe that it has given the power to OSC to make equity investments,” said Ashley Deeks, the vice-dean of the University of Virginia law school, who has written about US government ownership stakes in companies for the Harvard National Security Journal.

Since the OSC is not authorized to invest in shares of private companies, the Nabep ownership will be held by an entirely different Pentagon office, called Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (Ibas), according to the former Pentagon official.

But the mission of Ibas has nothing to do with oil. Its job, as it says on its website, is solely to “strengthen the US Defense Industrial Base”.

That incongruity is just one of the reasons major oil companies and investors privately say they are keeping clear of this deal, said Phil Gunson of the International Crisis Group, who has been briefed on the problem. “They are concerned about the irregularities. They are concerned about the terms of the deal. It’s the opacity of the agreement that has serious investors concerned,” he said.

“Whether the Pentagon has the authority to act in this way is debatable,” he added.

So the Pentagon owns the oil because Trump says so? Or somebody does? And that’s good for as long as Trump is in office? Or until Congress objects? Or it’s all a fiction? Who’s on first, here? All oil companies do know is that I Don’t Know’s on third.

And what about that diesel export ban everyone is talking about?

"If foreign buyers learn that American diesel comes with a political cancellation clause, they're going to go looking elsewhere," he said.

He said the damage won't end with lost sales. Countries hurt by the ban could look for ways to hit back, and China already has one. Beijing has restricted exports of rare earths and other critical materials during past trade fights. Those minerals end up in "our cars, our semiconductors, our advanced weapons," Wolfers said.

"China's not going to need to cut off every shipment to make its point," he said. "It just needs to remind American firms that two can play at this game."

Wolfers compared the ban to the first round of Trump's trade war. In that round, U.S. import restrictions led other countries to retaliate with restrictions of their own.

"Now we're restricting exports," he said. "The end game of all this is we may not get the supplies we need."

Remember the farmers who lost soybean contracts to China because of Trump’s tariffs? Did they all get those back? How much did that cost them? Why don’t we do that again?

It’s popular to blame Trump voters for this. But Trump has really been even stupider, and surrounded himself with more incompetent people, than really could have been imagined. Well, by some people. It really doesn’t pay to be smug about “I told you so.”

Right now, the difficulty is to realize just how damaging Trump is. Because no matter how bad you think it is, it’s always worse. And nobody deserves this.

And a fourth example:

Here, Trump says he is rejecting a deal that would immediately open the straits and lower oil prices. https://t.co/LlQTdDbvp9

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) September 26, 2026

Who thinks a Democratic Congress is going to stop this stupid “war”? 🙋🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️