Banana Republic Newsflash

[code monkey]

I presume that since the anniversary for the Battle of the Bulge was a couple of days ago, Fisher's comments will be summarized in one word: NUTS!

Nah.... he’s been busy trying to dodge the 4 year old so that he can pee in peace....

thanks for sharing.

[brite]

I presume that since the anniversary for the Battle of the Bulge was a couple of days ago, Fisher's comments will be summarized in one word: NUTS!

Nah.... he’s been busy trying to dodge the 4 year old so that he can pee in peace....

thanks for sharing.

Any time.... LOL

[Sigma_Orionis]

I guess Fisher is still serving the empire

[brite]

I guess Fisher is still serving the empire

Someone has to work around here.... I’m a permanent student, and the kid is too young to hold down a job....

[Sigma_Orionis]

Good Grief, the evil gringo capitalist infidel imperial imperialist from the evil gringo capitalist infidel imperial empire supports People? what happened to "rugged individualism"?

[Sigma_Orionis]

Those traitorous right wing fascists at Caracas Chronicles "Applaud the Sanctions"

As for boosting Maduro’s popularity, in all my years writing about Venezuela I have yet to come across the first foreign policy issue that really made a difference in public opinion. People care about bread-and-butter issues. Luisa Ortega’s visa … is not one of them.

Oh, some will say, the US will be made into the scapegoat by the chavista propaganda machine. They will blame the economic crisis on the sanctions, and somehow escape.

True, the propaganda aspect has already begun. But … guess what? We’ve been under an “economic war” propaganda barrage for more than a year, and it hasn’t worked. Yes, chavismo will lie. Yes, they will decry imperialism. They always do. That has not prevented Maduro’s popularity from falling.

Might be me, but I think they're right. Too bad if the damned bastards can't go shopping to Miami or visit Disneyworld

ETA: And then there's this, (supposedly) an account of the happenings at our finest news source: a TV News channel funded by several of our courageous revolutionary governments in the region that will show to the world the real news, because everyone knows that the mainstream media is bought and paid for by the damned capitalist western governments.

IOW there's going to be an equivalent of "Russia Today": TeleSUR, it's a TV channel that has been going around the region for the last few years, and now it's about to offer its broadcasts in english.

So the CC folks claim some disgruntled Chavista True Believers sent them an account on how the new revolutionary news channel does things If this true, don't expect much sympathy from me for those yahoos.

[brite]

Good Grief, the evil gringo capitalist infidel imperial imperialist from the evil gringo capitalist infidel imperial empire supports People? what happened to "rugged individualism"?

Please.... this is a welfare state.... LMAO

[code monkey]

Good Grief, the evil gringo capitalist infidel imperial imperialist from the evil gringo capitalist infidel imperial empire supports People? what happened to "rugged individualism"?

sigma, clearly you need to brush up on evil imperialist capitalism. it's ok to support others if one chooses to.

[SciFiFisher]

Good Grief, the evil gringo capitalist infidel imperial imperialist from the evil gringo capitalist infidel imperial empire supports People? what happened to "rugged individualism"?

It was squashed by a need to put bread on the table and a 4 year old who needed clothes.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Awwwwww poor you. Ayn Rand would be sooooo disapointed

[SciFiFisher]

Awwwwww poor you. Ayn Rand would be sooooo disapointed

Ayn Rand was an idiot and an anti-social with personality trait disorder.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Next thing you'll do is tell me that Paul Ryan is a conman or something

[SciFiFisher]

Next thing you'll do is tell me that Paul Ryan is a conman or something

and a bad one at that. I mean really, "let's not discuss the numbers of my budget because that will just confuse the real issues" is the best he can do to convince the American people that we should let him torch social security, medicare, and the ACA?

[brite]

We’ll make a PinkoCommieLiberal out of you yet, my love....

[Sigma_Orionis]

and a bad one at that. I mean really, "let's not discuss the numbers of my budget because that will just confuse the real issues" is the best he can do to convince the American people that we should let him torch social security, medicare, and the ACA?

Great Scott!, the Staunch Conservative with Reservations doesn't like Paul Ryan!

[SciFiFisher]

and a bad one at that. I mean really, "let's not discuss the numbers of my budget because that will just confuse the real issues" is the best he can do to convince the American people that we should let him torch social security, medicare, and the ACA?

Great Scott!, the Staunch Conservative with Reservations doesn't like Paul Ryan!

I don't really like any politician who uses spin doctors and hyperbole to explain a budget. He knows how much money he wants to spend and how much he wants to cut. He also knows that the minute he starts explaining why he thinks we need to cut social security and privatizing social security and Medicare that he has lost 40% of the voters he really needs. So his only chance is to tell us "I will save the federal government trillions of dollars. Just don't ask me who is going to pay for all of this because I don't want you to realize that anyone who is not wealthy is about to take a bite in the wallet". Of course, his spin doctors tell him that a large majority of the population really are stupid enough to fall for that.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I don't really like any politician who uses spin doctors and hyperbole to explain a budget. He knows how much money he wants to spend and how much he wants to cut. He also knows that the minute he starts explaining why he thinks we need to cut social security and privatizing social security and Medicare that he has lost 40% of the voters he really needs. So his only chance is to tell us "I will save the federal government trillions of dollars. Just don't ask me who is going to pay for all of this because I don't want you to realize that anyone who is not wealthy is about to take a bite in the wallet". Of course, his spin doctors tell him that a large majority of the population really are stupid enough to fall for that.

Somehow, I think you wouldn't tolerate our Righteous Socialist Paradise more than 15 seconds, you just described Nicky's approach very succinctly

[code monkey]

I don't really like any politician who uses spin doctors and hyperbole to explain a budget. He knows how much money he wants to spend and how much he wants to cut. He also knows that the minute he starts explaining why he thinks we need to cut social security and privatizing social security and Medicare that he has lost 40% of the voters he really needs. So his only chance is to tell us "I will save the federal government trillions of dollars. Just don't ask me who is going to pay for all of this because I don't want you to realize that anyone who is not wealthy is about to take a bite in the wallet". Of course, his spin doctors tell him that a large majority of the population really are stupid enough to fall for that.

Somehow, I think you wouldn't tolerate our Righteous Socialist Paradise more than 15 seconds, you just described Nicky's approach very succinctly

even more succinctly - trust me.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Ahhh separation of powers (NOT), democracy in action (even less).

Using the constitution as toilet paper....

[Swift]

<snip>
What makes the current disaster much worse is not only the size of boom that was (once again) wasted, or the lost opportunities. Is that since 2007 our oil production has been declining steadily because Chavez & Co refused to invest in keeping our Oil production infrastructure updated and wasted a very important share of our revenues in his "Oil Diplomacy" for his "Latin American Integration" ambitions (which once again I must say, if THAT favors anyone, it favors Brazil and possibly Argentina, just like IMHO the EU in the end just mostly favors Germany and France). The rest went to his subsidies and creating a Bureaucracy that makes your US Federal Government look like a model of efficiency.

Sorry Sigma, I haven't been keeping up and so my reply is a little out of date, but I wanted to add a couple of biased thoughts (I'll explain the bias in a moment).

My take on one of the reasons for the lack of investment in the oil infrastructure is that Venezuela keeps nationalizing the infrastructure built by foreign (US) companies. My bias comes from a personal example - the company I work for built a plant in Venezuela to make proppants for the oil industry; several years ago it was nationalized and basically taken away from us, with no compensation (I think we got a payment for some trivial percentage of our investment). The only "compensation" is that we understand without our engineering help, that the plant has basically stopped working and been shut down.

There are numerous similar incidents to this; I suspect you can rattle them off better than I can.

External companies are just not going to do business with Venezuela under such conditions, and quite frankly, I doubt Venezuela has the technological and financial resources to do it on their own. So the decline in the infrastructure is pretty much assured.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Sorry Sigma, I haven't been keeping up and so my reply is a little out of date, but I wanted to add a couple of biased thoughts (I'll explain the bias in a moment).

My take on one of the reasons for the lack of investment in the oil infrastructure is that Venezuela keeps nationalizing the infrastructure built by foreign (US) companies. My bias comes from a personal example - the company I work for built a plant in Venezuela to make proppants for the oil industry; several years ago it was nationalized and basically taken away from us, with no compensation (I think we got a payment for some trivial percentage of our investment). The only "compensation" is that we understand without our engineering help, that the plant has basically stopped working and been shut down.

There are numerous similar incidents to this; I suspect you can rattle them off better than I can.

External companies are just not going to do business with Venezuela under such conditions, and quite frankly, I doubt Venezuela has the technological and financial resources to do it on their own. So the decline in the infrastructure is pretty much assured.

Yeah, that's about the size of it.

Back in 1971, this moron signed a law that would gradually nationalize our oil concessions. then in 1976 this idiot unilaterally nationalized all the oil Industry. At the time he did pay (an inflated) compensation. Why was it inflated? well he payed a lot of OUR money to accelerate the process for no other reason than to plant the flag, thump his chest and say "I'm a patriot, now our oil is really OURS" It wasn't as bad because at least we had a small amount of local expertise in managing the existing oil fields. But, of course, there was little new investment, and Production stagnated

After 1989 the government reversed course and opened oil concessions again and SURPRISE! oil production increased again.

After the 2003 Oil strike. Chavez fired most of the striking workers at PDVSA and replaced them with people who favored him and his revolution, and of course, in 2007 he kicked all of the Oil Multinationals out of the country in a manner very similar to what you mention.

I agree with you, we DON'T have the technical expertise and (specially now) nowhere near the financial muscle to fix our mess. Our production continues to decline, we have to start working on our the Heavy Oil reserves which are relatively expensive to exploit and on top of that the price of oil dropped sharply. As usual we made our bed.

While I'd love to place the blame on Chavez and his clique, it's really a cultural problem we as a country have. We don't want to do the hard stuff and also expect others to do it for free. THAT sums up the history of this country in one sentence.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Venezuelan government weighs in on ice-cream shop row

Milk Scarcity? yeah right, because for the last week it has been pretty easy to find right?

BTW condensed milk is almost impossible to find, I have tried for the last three weeks. two weeks ago, I managed to buy some Skim Milk (my mother drinks it). But in the last week? NOPE.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Nicky SFTU

He said his country was suffering the consequences of an economic war launched by US President Barack Obama "to destroy" the oil producers' cartel, Opec.

Riiiigth because the US just HAS to buy OUR oil

"It is a two-year plan, which is affecting the prices of commodities and many developing economies," Mr Maduro said.

Yeah, cause Fidel told you..... wait he's kissing with the HNIC now isn't he?

"The US wants to impose a unipolar world controlled from Washington. That is madness."

So, you've been in hibernation since 1991 right? Apparently the process kills too many brain cells if you're an example of it......

[Sigma_Orionis]

So this is the reason, why several government sponsored graffiti have popped up around the city....

Maduro tells Biden United States 'must respect Venezuela'

what does the graffiti say? "Gringo Respeta" ("Gringo, show some respect").

Why should the gringos respect us? the people we elect as our leaders make such stupid antics that have made us the laughing stock of the Western Hemisphere.

Edited for Clarity.

[Swift]

R - E - S - P - E - C - T

Find out what it means to me.