Liberal Arguments Collapse Under their Own Weight: Just Take Renee Good and ICE

On the issue of Renee Good, ICE, the border, and on so many other issues, there's a point where liberal mental gymnastics becomes impossible to ignore.

When someone finds themselves defending criminals or excusing blatantly criminal behavior—not because they believe in it, but because it helps them attack something else they dislike—while simultaneously preaching about "law and order," that's the moment the alarm bells should go off for them. That's when something should click. Because it's a contradiction so loud even a deaf person could at least feel it.

But that's the core problem, isn't it? These arguments don't make sense because they're not built on anything solid. They're built on slogans. On feelings. They only fit on bumper stickers. On whatever sounds good in the moment. And it doesn't stop at one issue—it's woven into their entire worldview (that is, if you can accept, they actually have a view on anything, truly). They literally live in a constant state of contradiction.

Take a few examples.

Women must be defined clearly and biologically if we're talking about equal pay or opportunity—but the definition suddenly shifts when the conversation turns to say, sports, and someone needs to be "protected." Rather than conjoin the two arguments, they simply separate the two and make a new one, using an entirely new basis and premise to try and bring it home.

Abortion must be celebrated as a right, yet we must also accept that executing a convicted murderer is immoral. They can't define the two things as separate, very different things.

The pattern is unmistakable. These aren't positions. They're oppositions. The stances themselves need not be coherent or cohesive. They only need to resist something else. And it's the age-old response you get—that's not what we're talking about right now—when you try to check them on it.

Once the opposition is chosen, everything around it is bent, stretched, or redefined to fit—even when it defies logic, consistency, basic common sense, or paints them into a corner on another topic.

They're not arguments based on principle. They're arguments based on reflex. When that becomes the guiding force, nothing can make sense.

In order to accept Good was right and ICE was wrong, you have to bend and twist the narrative in remarkable ways to make it all come together, and inevitably...

Contradict yourself.

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© 2026 Jim Bauer

After Maduro: The Real Test Begins

Can Trump make Venezuela great again?

It's a provocative question, but not an unreasonable one now that Nicolás Maduro is out of power, in U.S. custody, and the United States has announced it will oversee the country's transition. The moment demands honesty: even when the U.S. intervenes with the best of intentions, the outcomes in these other nations haven't always been improvements. That's not an indictment of America or its motives—it's simply an acknowledgement of history.

I say this as someone who generally supports efforts to remove destructive leaders. When bad actors hold power, ordinary people pay the price. And if there's one thing I've learned from talking to people across the world online, it's that most of us—regardless of culture, religion, or geography—want the same basic things. We want stability. We want opportunity. We want a future for our children and our grandchildren greater than our own.

And we want to live in general safety and comfort.

The tragedy is that those universal desires often get twisted by those who rule. Power thrives on division. Leaders manufacture enemies, crises, and threats because fear is a reliable tool for control. It keeps people distracted, divided and dependent.

Now that Maduro is gone, I want us to get this one right. I'd prefer we got all of them right, but this is the moment in front of us. And the stakes aren't about America's reputation or some future trophy on a shelf. They're about the people of Venezuela—people who have endured decades of hardship, corruption, and collapse.

This was once one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America. Today, many Venezuelans live with shortages of basic goods, a shattered economy, and a daily grind that's a constant struggle for mere survival. They deserve more than that. They deserve a chance to rebuild, to breathe, and to hope again.

Frankly, all people deserve that.

With Maduro removed, that chance exists—but it's fragile. How the U.S. chooses to intervene will ultimately now shape whether Venezuela rises or sinks further. Our actions can accelerate recovery or derail it. It depends on the strategy, the execution, and—most importantly—how the Venezuelan people themselves perceive and participate in the process.

As for the reasons behind the U.S. action, opinions will vary widely. But across political lines, there's broad agreement on at least one point—or perhaps there should be. Maduro's leadership has not served the Venezuelan people well, nor has it contributed positively to regional stability. His documented involvement in narcoterrorism has had devastating consequences far beyond Venezuela's borders.

What the U.S. will need to confront first is the machinery of the drug cartels. That won't be a simple task. It's similar to when we try to extinguish power in other countries from well-funded and well-organized terror groups or tribes—take the Taliban in Afghanistan for example, or what we've dealt with in the past with deep factions of ISIS or Al-Qaeda.

These networks aren't just criminal enterprises—they're woven into the fabric of daily life. For all its oil wealth, Venezuela's functional economy for ordinary people has long been the drug trade. The profits from oil have propped up those operations, not the Venezuelan people. And when the only reliable path to survival is joining a gang or entering a criminal pipeline, the cycle becomes self-perpetuating.

Will dismantling these networks end the drug war? Of course not. Cartels are adaptable. They'll shift operations to places where U.S. influence is weaker, and they have the money, infrastructure, and ruthlessness to do it. That's the reality.

But there's a deeper question we rarely grapple with: what replaces that economy? How do you build a system where people don't have to rely on crime to feed their families? Too often, that's where our interventions fall short. We focus on removing the bad actors but not on creating sustainable alternatives that change where the money flows and who benefits from it.

Think of it the way we would if a major industry in the United States suddenly disappeared. Something has to take its place. And when that industry collapses, the people who depended on it are forced to adapt. They have to find a new path, learn new skills, and adjust to an entirely different economic reality.

If Venezuela is going to rebuild, it needs more than security operations. It needs an economic foundation that gives people a reason to choose something other than the lifeline provided by the cartels—a future where legitimate work and legitimate opportunity is not only possible but preferable.  That's the part we have to get right, or everything else collapses back into the same old patterns.

If real opportunity is returned to the people of Venezuela—opportunity they can see, touch, and trust—then the cartels and other factions lose their grip. They can no longer offer what legitimate society fails to provide. When people have a future they can build, the power of those who prey on desperation begins to fade.

Fail to do this, and all we've done is to push the problem a little further down the road.

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© 2026 Jim Bauer

The Responsibility We Keep Forgetting When We Stop Thinking

Sometimes you stop and wonder. What's gone wrong with our system? On paper, it's representative government—the voice of the People. And yet, that's exactly where the trouble begins. Or it's at least where a lot of it is now.

There's an old saying. Bad data in, bad data out. If we feed a system the wrong inputs, we shouldn't be surprised when the outputs disappoint us.

We complain endlessly about ineffective mayors, governors, and local officials who seem to make everything worse. They mismanage, they mislead, they muddy the waters. But when the dust settles, who's really at fault? Is it the politicians who fall short—or is it us, the voters who put them there?

Because at the end of the day we're the ones making the choices. We're the ones who accept the promises, overlook the failures, or ignore them entirely. And when a leader faces serious criticism yet still wins reelection, it raises a hard question: how seriously are we taking our responsibility as voters?

Yes, elected officials hold power. But that power originates with us. And that means the real issue isn't just leadership. It's the quality of the electorate. As a society, we've grown less skeptical, less curious, and far too willing to accept whatever the mainstream narrative tells us, even when we suspect bias is baked into every angle.

Social media hasn't helped. Oh, sure. We think it does. We think it counters the dishonest media. The truth is, instead of encouraging open dialogue, it often creates and rewards echo chambers. People don't want to ask questions anymore. They want to be affirmed. They want to block out anything that challenges their worldview. That's not empowerment. That's self-imposed silence.

There's a quote—I can't recall who said it—that goes, "Every dollar we spend casts a vote for the kind of world we want to live in." It was meant about commerce and environmental choices, but it applies just as well to voting. If we end up with poor leadership, it's because we collectively chose it. Or, on the flip side, we allowed ourselves to make a bad choice.

Our vote matters. It shapes what comes next. It determines who holds power and what they do with it.

Blaming officials when things go wrong is easy. It lets us dodge responsibility. We can always say, "Well, I didn't vote for that person." And sometimes that's true. But the deeper question is, when we made whatever choice we ultimately made, how did we vote? Any of us. All of us. On either side of the aisle.

How did we make our choice?

Did we listen carefully? Did we research? Or did we rely on a party label, a news outlet, a social media circle, or a blogger who already agreed with us?

Ultimately, voters decide the direction of the country—right or wrong, good or bad. So, when things fall apart, at what point do we admit that some of the blame belongs to us? When do we acknowledge that maybe we're part of the problem?

People often argue for term limits. But in a way we already have them. We always have. They're called elections. If we had a more informed, more engaged, more discerning voting public, we wouldn't need set limits. Leaders who fail would simply be voted out.

But there is a catch there. It's in how we evaluate successes and failures as much as anything. Are we honest about what's a successful thing and what's gone wrong? Or do we determine that by the same cues offered from our political biases, news outlets, social media circles, and a closed mind way of thinking?

The founders never intended for unfit leaders to rise to power. They intended for the People to choose wisely—to be the penultimate safeguard of the Republic.

Which means, ultimately, that if the system is failing, it's because we are failing. We're the ones checking the boxes. We're the ones shaping the world we live in. And we're also the ones who have allowed ourselves to be so divided that critical thinking and compromise are like relics.

If we want to climb out of this mess, the solution isn't louder voices—it's sharper minds. We need to listen more carefully, think more independently, and stop outsourcing our judgement to whatever source shouts the loudest—or simply shouts the things we prefer to hear.

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© 2025 Jim Bauer

The Nationwide Penny Shortage is Hooey

Is it an honest mistake, mass confusion, opportunism or plain nonsense—you decide. Ever since the final penny was minted on November 12th by order of President Donald J. Trump, signs have been popping up everywhere warning of a "nationwide penny shortage." Stores are urging cash customers to use exact change or accept that their totals will be rounded to the nearest nickel.

Sure, sometimes the rounding works in your favor. At McDonald's the other day, my change should have been 24 cents, but I was handed a quarter instead. In another transaction, though, I ended up paying an extra 3 cents. Maybe it eventually balances out on paper, but that's not the point.

The point is this: the U.S. Mint estimates that roughly 300 billion pennies are currently in circulation. For context, the Mint typically produces between 5 and 7 billion new pennies each year, and even in 2025—after production was halted—one billion pennies were still minted. We are not running out of pennies. Not even close.

Yes, about 8% of pennies "disappear" annually—into jars, drawers, couch cushions, parking lots and the void of everyday life. But even with that attrition, the idea that we've suddenly hit a nationwide shortage is absurd.

The hard truth is simple: there is no penny shortage. We're being misled.

Whether or not this qualifies as gouging, it's undeniably dishonest. Businesses don't want to deal with pennies, and they've spotted an opportunity to quietly pad their margins even if only roughly 20% of all transactions conducted are done with cash.

Maybe it's small beans, I'll admit. But what frustrates me here is the blatant falsehood of it all. No federal authority—the president, the U.S. Mint, the treasury—has told anyone to stop using pennies. In fact, they've emphasized the opposite.

There are plenty of pennies in circulation, they remain legal tender, and people should continue using them.

So, why the signs? Why the warnings? Why the fiction of a "shortage"? It's a completely manufactured narrative, and a dishonest one.

And there's another wrinkle here. If businesses keep pretending pennies are scarce, and the government doesn't put a stop to it, then the burden shifts to nickels. That's an even bigger problem. A penny costs about 4 cents to produce, but a nickel costs 13.8 cents. Eliminating pennies, then, doesn't save money—it substantially increases minting costs. If nickels have to fill the gap for every rounded transaction, we'll need far more of them, and the financial loss grows.

Essentially, eliminating the penny to reduce minting costs falls flat.

If we ever reach a genuine penny shortage, then fine—let's revisit the conversation. But right now, the penny is still plentiful, still valid, and still very much a part of our currency system. Did they mint one billion new pennies in 2025 just to have them be obsolete and wasted scraps of copper in 2026? Hardly.

Businesses should stop at once, perpetuating a false narrative and return to giving accurate change until the last penny ceases to exist. Which, by conservative estimates, won't be until 2085.

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© 2025 Jim Bauer

Gas or Food? Oh, Cry Me a River

Cue the violins. Here come the sad songs, the despairing portraits, the finger pointing and—once again—the flushing of common sense straight down the drain.

Forget politics for a moment. It doesn't matter who's at fault for the government shutdown—even though we know it's the Democrats, to be clear about that. What matters is that paychecks are frozen, and yes, that stinks. Nobody wants to work for free. But the work still has to be done, and someone still has to do it.

And let's be honest. Those paychecks will eventually arrive. That's not the real issue.

After the Great Depression one lesson became painfully clear: You cannot depend on the economy, your job, or any so-called "safety net" to rescue you when things collapse. You have to rely on yourself. At least to some degree, you have to be prepared.

What did Rush Limbaugh used to tell us? Create your own economy so you aren't forced to abide by the rules of the real one.

That's why the 6-month rule was born. Save half a year's salary and create a rainy-day fund. It's been preached for nearly a century. Yet here we are, hearing stories of air traffic controllers—who earn around $125,000 a year by the way—claiming they can't afford gas to get to work.

So, what happened? Did they miss the memo? Ignore the advice? Or simply choose not to prepare?

Look, I'm not without compassion. I understand the frustration. Even when it comes to the world outside of government, CEOs make decisions all the time and someone gets hurt in the process and people have to make tough choices.

But let's be real. What these air traffic controllers are facing, and what anyone faces in this position—it's a self-inflicted wound. Jobs vanish. Paychecks stop. That's life. It's been this way since the beginning of time.

So, who's to blame when you're left exposed? The greedy rich? The bickering government? Society? The system? Or maybe, it's you. The one who ignored the warnings, skipped the preparation, and left yourself vulnerable.

Spare me the sob stories. Life isn't fair. Sometimes you're left holding the bag through no fault of your own. But the larger truth is timeless. This cycle has repeated for generations and will repeat long after today's headlines fade.

From layoffs to government shutdowns to people losing their SNAP benefits, the story is always the same. It's someone else's fault that someone must suffer. Yet, as I said before, it's not like the memo hasn't been out there for everyone to plainly see it. The endless dependence. The failure of so many people in society to be able to fend for themselves in some way when the time comes.

People making six-figures living paycheck to paycheck.

Like I said, I am not without compassion or feeling. I do get it. But I also get that sometimes things are just beyond our control, and so we have to have a backup plan to compensate for that.

The harsh reality is that if you are caught unprepared, it's your own damn fault. It's really as simple as that. End of story. Stop the violins.

You wrote the song, but you missed the chorus. And like all choruses do, that's the part that repeats over and over again and sticks the most prominently in memory. It's hard for me to shed a tear when someone falls victim to the obvious.

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©2025 Jim Bauer