Fifty-One

 Anybody else out there wondering how Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia are doing?

It seems like a war ago that the U.S. Armed Forces invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president. Compared to the quagmire that has become the "Expedition to Iran," the military operation in Venezuela seems positively quaint by comparison. Sure, shots were fired in anger, but no girls schools were harmed during that incursion. 

Now the convicted felon is musing once again aloud about how he believes that Venezuela would make a nice fifty-first state. Assistant press secretary Olivia Whales announced on behalf of her boss, "As the President has said, relations between Venezuela and the United States have been extraordinary. Oil is starting to flow and large amounts of money, unseen for many years, will soon be helping the great people of Venezuela."

Oil and money are flowing. Don't you worry your pretty little heads about economic and political stability. 

Which raises certain questions for me: Does a military invasion count as a path to statehood? If this is the case, how worried should the citizens of California and New York be about Federales rolling into their historically blue settlements? Or if the adjudicated rapist follows through with his plan for Venezuela will he just be guaranteeing yet another blue headache? 

Of course, all of this requires some mild forward thinking and planning. The quagmire in Iran suggests that this is not the strong suit of the current administration. Running out of missiles and time, the oil and money in that corner of the globe doesn't seem to be flowing in the direction the twice-impeached Orange Worst had in mind. And all of that Venezuelan money and oil doesn't seem to have found its way to the American consumer, who are experiencing the worst inflation in three years. 

Meanwhile, former president Maduro and his wife are living a life of relative calm and safety in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until their case can be tried. As for that whole fifty-first state fuss, the rules concerning that sort of thing are laid out in the U.S. Constitution. Which, for this group of idiots, means that they don't have to worry about the details. Not right now. 

We've got a ballroom to build!