The paragraph which has not yet been written:
A beleaguered people suffering under economic hardship due to the crony statist policies of a political bully who played upon class divisions and used hand-outs to the poor as a political tool, have elected to the presidency a conservative candidate who ran on a pro-business, pro-growth platform.
Maybe on November 6, but not on October 7:
#Chavez (54 pct) defeats #Capriles (44 pct). More to come …
— Randy Archibold (@rcarchiboldNYT) October 8, 2012
opposition candidate @hcapriles speaking live – concedes, respects the results – thanks his 6 million supporters for their trust
— Elias Lopez (@elopez_nyc) October 8, 2012
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Hugo wins, Venezuela loses.
Advisers from the Chicago political brain trust must have aided and abetted Hugo’s campaign. Maybe that explains O’bammy’s pathetic performance last Wednesday… All his top people were in Caracas…
JT
You would search the White House photo archives in vain for a photo of Obama looking as pleased and tickled by the presence of Netanyahu–or, for that matter, any leader of America’s traditional allies.
Sadly true. They have similar goals.
Au contraire, Ms. Cassandra.
I saw a picture of Obama beaming at Netanyahu with a huge smile … with Bibi’s back turned as he was leaving to go home.
Big surprise. Did anyone think a dictator like this slimeball would go quietly into the night? May the cancer/disease/whatever take him slowly and painfully for what he has done to that country.
Oh yes definitely. he is still ballooned out. Chavez is still on Prednisolone plus anti cancer treatments. He is not on top of his tumours .
I don’t know how fair these elections were but Venezuelans must be stupid to elect a man with ravaged plumbing & man parts.
The largest employer is the government in Venezuela. That and the “misiones” that give free stuff to people should answer any question about people “voting” for Hugo. Add to this a little memo that was transmitted last week to government employees stating that half the year-end bonus would be paid by the 5th and a not so subtle hint to vote on the 7th, and there you have it. There’s a saying in Spanish “tirano no sale con votos” (loosly translated – a tyrant isn’t voted out) which is very true. This is a snapshot of what happens to a country when you have a government that is humongous and corrupt and the largest employer.
One of these is just like the other.
Tweedledum and tweedledumber
Anyone who believes Chavez actually won the election, I have an Iranian election I want to sell you.
A sad day for the world, but very expected.
Curiously, Chavez is the only world leader who seems impressed by Obama. That says worlds, doesn’t it?
Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982):
“All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, an anti-American Venezuelan dictator as a buddy, and I’m fine.”
1. Before Chavez took over, from time to time I would see news about Venezuela. The reports would invariably be about one or two things: corruption and incompetence.
America’s ruling class hasn’t achieved Venezuelan standards yet, but they’re on the way. The more incompetent they become, the more power they grab.
2. Exit polls showed Chavez behind. Did he steal the election? It seems plausible and I’d like to believe it, but what I’d like to believe is not necessarily true. What’s the scoop?
3. Maybe on November 6, but not on October 7: (Boldface mine.)
That Chavez may have won legitimately is a scarier thought than that he stole the election.
Honestly, I mean no offense, but the thought that Chavez won legitimately is silly. Chavez rules like a dictator, and could have easily fixed the election and have provided a result that seems credible only to an Obama-zombie or Al Shaprton.
From what I understand, the opposition Speaker of the Venezuelan House of Representatives, Senior Juan Boehner, has verified the election as legitimate.
Sad day, but expected.
HOWEVER, Obama has not gained the same degree of control of our country as Hugo Chavez has over his. While Obama can shut down the Internet with a push of a button, he’ll have to do it — and more — in order to prevail in November.
But in any event, we still have Speaker of the House John Boehner to protect us, just as he has been doing since 2010. (Or is he protecting Obama? I keep getting this confused.)
Legitimacy and Chavez are mutually exclusive. None of the last elections or the referendum were won “legitimately.” It’s a bit difficult to think about honesty, legitimacy and concepts like that with a CNE (electoral commission) totally in the hands of Hugo and his henchmen, voter rolls with Superman (sound familiar) and the dead voting and little machines that are programmed by the CNE. Yesterday there were problems with void votes. No one told people to wait until the photo of their candidate displayed fully before pressing the button to vote. The busing in of Hugo’s followers “after hours” to vote again and again with multiple voter ID cards didn’t help. I could go on and on.
Honestly, I mean no offense, but the thought that Chavez won legitimately is silly.
Your insight should come as a relief to our host, given all the work he is doing to oppose Elizabeth Warren. No need for all that laborious sifting for evidence in volumes of documentation. He should just announce, “The thought that Warren’s claims are legitimate is silly.”
I was alluding to the vote counting. Apparently Chavez bought votes with government money, but that’s not what I was getting at.
i’m buying more ammo… this is my country: Molon Labe.
And don’t forget that both these guys have given guns to drug dealers in neighboring countries.
Though, to be fair, that hasn’t been 100% proved in the case of Chavez.
They elected to exchange liberty for submission with benefits. Apparently, a lot of people prefer to live in a lower energy state, where they can simply exist with minimal effort and thought.
This picture just sent chills down my spine. How often is it that one sees Captain Kickass smiling that broadly? He doesn’t even smile like that around his daughters.
“It’s not who votes, it’s who counts the votes.” –attributed to Josef Stalin
Allow me to take a contrarian view.
It would not surprise me at all if Chavez won a majority if the votes.
My mother is Uruguayan. I was born in Peru, but lived throughout Latin America during my youth, including a few years in Caracas. (My dad was an American in the oil business.)
By the Obama-Indonesia standard, this makes me an expert in Latin America, but I won’t go that far. Nevertheless, poor Latin Americans turn again and again to these leftists who promise to take from the rich to give to the poor. (The rich are the cause of all their misery after all). A decades-old watchword is “land reform,” which is literally the confiscation of large estates and dividing them up as public housing.
I will apologize in advance for the following politically-incorrect generalization which I realize is not universal and may strike some as racist: Venezuelans are the laziest people I have ever met.
In impoverished Latin America, it is all class warfare all the time, and Venezuelans are particularly amenable to it. The popularity of the likes of Juan Peron (yes, Argentine, I realize)was not illusory. There’s a story that a reporter asked a demonstrator at a Peron rally why he supported Peron. He answered, “Before Peron I was poor and a nobody. Now I’m just poor.”
To give an illustration, there is a popular dish there known as hallaca (ah-YA-kah), a sort of flat tamale wrapped in a banana leaf. There is no shortage of banana leaves in Venezuela, but it imports them from Costa Rica. Why? Because no one will pick the leaves. This would be similar to Saudi Arabia importing sand.
Jingo, you paint with a broad brush. While there are some who are lazy, and this trait can be found everywhere, not just among Venezuelans, this is not what I saw and experienced when I lived there, and I had occasion to rub shoulders with people from different social strata, from the highest to the lowest. Quite the contrary, I saw the opposite. I saw hardworking and honorable people.
Yes, Venezuelans love to party (any excuse or no excuse will work) and some will try to find the easiest way to get from point A to B with the least amount of effort (called “viveza criolla”), but this is true of many human beings and is not always a negative characteristic because oftentimes it brings about interesting and positive results. Laziness is not exclusive to Venezuelans so I would hesitate to make a sweeping statement like that. That there is a vast under-and uneducated mass cannot be denied and these are the ones who are most susceptible to the “goodies” that are offered.
As for “land reform” the poor peasants have been taken in by that concept. In Venezuela, it is the government that is the largest landowner, but it does not work the land, rather, the government goes after the working spreads and spurs class hatred in an effort to get everyone under its thumb. I’d venture to say that if the government really wanted to do something good for the people (instead of keeping them beholden) it could easily lease land to those who wanted it for a modest sum and not make a dent it its holdings. I could go on, but I don’t want to bore you.
Just be careful when making sweeping statements like you did. Not everyone fits the bill. There is a lot that is bad in Venezuelan (but then isn’t that true here too), but there is a lot that is good.