In the Venezuelan crisis, said President Donald Trump in Florida, "All options are on the table." And if Venezuela's generals persist in their refusal to break with Nicolas Maduro, they could "lose everything."

Another example of Yankee bluster and bluff?

Or is Trump prepared to use military force to bring down Maduro and install Juan Guaido, the president of the national assembly who has declared himself president of Venezuela?

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"If you look at Trump in America and Bolsonaro in Brazil, you see that people want politicians that do what they promise," said Spanish businessman Juan Carlos Perez Carreno.

The Spaniard was explaining to The New York Times what lay behind the rise of Vox, which the Times calls "Spain's first far-right party since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975."

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Both of America's great national parties are coalitions.

But it is the Democratic Party that never ceases to celebrate diversity -- racial, religious, ethnic, cultural -- as its own and as America's "greatest strength."

Understandably so, for the party is home to a multitude of minorities.

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After reading an especially radical platform agreed upon by the British Labor Party, one Tory wag described it as "the longest suicide note in history."

The phrase comes to mind on reading of the resolution calling for a Green New Deal, advanced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and endorsed by at least five of the major Democratic candidates for president.

The Green New Deal is designed to recall the halcyon days of the 1930s, when, so the story goes, FDR came to Washington to enact the historic reforms that rescued America from the Great Depression.

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If the pollsters at CNN and CBS are correct, Donald Trump may have found the formula for winning a second term in 2020.

His State of the Union address, say the two networks, met with the approval of 76 percent of all viewers -- 97 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of independents and 30 percent of Democrats. Seventy-two percent agreed with the president's plans for securing the border with Mexico.

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