I thought the MSM in unison told us that Chavez was a "dictator" that controlled "the levers of government" and that he "bought" his support by parsing out his oil wealth to the poor. How could this have happened? Was yesterday's vote a "victory" or a "defeat" for Chavez?
Our fear now must be that Chavez will to turn north for advice. Just thinking about Bush advising Chavez on effectively using a cabal in the Supreme Court to stealing an election is scary enough.
What if Bush would school Chavez on operating with only a narrow majority in the legislature to subvert a constitution stripping away civil liberties, wiretapping and repealing habeus corpus, while ignoring the law with renditions and torture.
Can't you just hear Bush condescendingly preaching to Chavez about the importance of secrecy in government? It would be hard for this prankish president to resist laughing at Chavez that he can't even get term limits extended! Heck, half of Europe doesn't have term limits! What kind of "dictator" is he?
Maybe Chavez needs to invade a country or two, his feeble 1% of GNP spending on his military is not going make him the darling of his corporations or military. Beef it up baby, would be Bush's advice.
If Chavez could only make up to Bush, I am sure the U.S. leader could show him a thing or two about dishing out the dollars to stay in power. Bush would split a gut over Chavez's attempt to "buy support" by spending on social programs vs. tax cuts for the wealthy and deficit spending for the military.
Bush is not the brightest, but our gentlemen C president would certainly be capable of lecturing Chavez not to be all too concerned about spreading the wealth widely. His 60% popular vote mandate in election after election is a waste of resources to our guy. Go for the 50.1%. Spend wisely.
Bush would tell him to stopping bragging about cutting poverty rates in half or getting new voters to actually participate in the future of their country. It is all for naught if the corporations, the wealth few, are not beating the drums for you.
Bush knows how to manipulate the masses. Chavez must be in awe. A year after 9/11, some 70% of the U.S. thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11! Now that is control of the media!
Just think of all that wasted time working with the legislature who took the original 33 reforms and added to them, then he wasted almost two months -- from Aug. 16 to Oct. 7 -- with some 9,020 public events, during which more than 10 million copies of the reforms were distributed and one poll found some 70% of the Venezuelan people read them. Informing the public??? These third-world presidents have much to learn from our guy.
Bush could help him be much more effective with just one suggestion. Get one of his wealthy supporters to buy a major television outlet with supporting newspapers and media, then blast the propaganda. Forget about informing the people.
Even Chavez can see it was much cleaner when the U.S. backed dictators controlled Latin America and reigned through terror. Our wealthy guys working with their wealthy guys to err... get wealthier. If you wanted something done, they didn't need no damn referendum. If would have been a cocktail party joke to speak of "term limits." Oh for the good ole days!
This democracy stuff is messy with no certain results. If only Chavez would emulate Bush, Latin America would go back to the good times. Please Chavez, don’t look north for ideas...
I don't see that happening. While our propagandists make Chavez out to be the "dictator," the left is winning election after election in Latin America. Funny, we don’t hear or read the same vindictives directed towards the socialist president of Chile, Morales or Correa. The propagandist need one guy they can pinpoint. Remind you of anyone? This tactic is well practiced. As a side note, you won’t see them write much about the U.S.-backed Columbia government that has been decimated with corruption while Bush lavishes millions in aid on them.
How sad and ironic to read our media preach to the Venezuelan people about what they should do and how their duly elected president is a "dictator." It seems our corporate controlled media knows no bounds when it comes to exposing their hypocrisy.
The U.S. backed oligarchies of the past are under attack from ironically-- democracy. Get used to it.