US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 121

On January 02 2019 03:58 iamthedave wrote:
No, I'm not upset. You aren't even reading my posts by the looks of things. I have no face to save here. You're putting up no opposition to my points that is even relevant and completely ignoring most of what I say, including essentially repeating things I've said to you as if I hadn't already said them. I'm pretty confident that if the point of discussion is to convince those who listen or read, I've thrashed you. If they're curious about the things I've said, I've pointed them in the direction of multiple areas where they can look up Venezuala's downfall. And I'm 100% confident that after looking into that country's sad state of affairs, they'll come to more or less the same conclusions I have after doing so.

If you seriously thought I believed I'd convince you... again, you aren't reading my posts. I knew how you'd respond, because you're very predictable on this subject.

Bottom line: Chavez did good for Venezuala but laid the foundations for its destruction. Your refusal to face reality doesn't stop it being real.

The fact that you tagged on a pathetic thing about 'how the US should protect the Venezualan oil industry' really does summarise your problems on this topic. When did I ever remotely imply such a thing? When did I say Venezuala should 'become a vassal state to the US'? When did I imply such a thing?

Go on, I'll wait. Quote me.

I've made multiple accusations that you've dodged and attempted to turn this into the US vs. Venezuala, when all along I've been trying to focus on Hugo Chavez and his actual policies that he actually passed and things he actually did as El Presidente. Your constant evasion on these points suggests to me you haven't looked into the specifics much at all, because if you had there's no way at all you could defend some of his decisions.

As I've said three times now: You have condemned people for doing things Chavez did in other contexts. Either he did wrong according to GH, or you're a collossal hypocrite who's willing to condemn Capitalists for things you deem to be okay so long as a Socialist does it. Never mind that those things led directly to the current unfolding horror in Venezuala.

The issues that have had an impact on the Venezuelan economy are not caused by an alleged socialism, but relatively low oil prices and sabotage by violent right-winged opposition to Bolivarianism. In 2014, Saudi Arabia allied with the US and Israel to strategically flood the market with inexpensive oil— which resultantly drove the price of oil down from $110 to $28 per barrel, with the purpose of weakening opponents of said allied countries, whose economies are reliant on oil and natural gas exports, such as Venezuela. As a result of this course of action, the Venezuelan state budget has been significantly reduced, which has decimated the economy, and has produced a crisis in the funding of Venezuelan social programs which are in turn vital to the strengthening of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

Additionally, private companies import the majority of food in Venezuela and ask for subsidized foreign currency from the government oil sales in order to accomplish that. Venezuela needs to find other sources of income since they can no longer depend on the now cheap oil sales. At the same time, ExxonMobil grants contracts to Guyana for infrastructure, drilling and storage with the intention of extracting the immense “Liza Project” located in maritime territory claimed by Venezuela. The gist of the issues the US has with Venezuela is the fact that it is a socialist, anti-imperialist nation that aspires for economic independence sans intervention. 76% of Venezuelans oppose foreign intervention, according to surveys from the polling organization Hinterlaces.

On the other hand, Venezuela and Colombia have sociopolitical tensions in part due to Colombia's alignment with the US. For example, Colombian journalist Claudia Cano has recently been revealed to have allegedly manipulated the narrative of so-called Venezuelan defector Edgar de Jesus Villanueva on camera. Moreover, Maduro called Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos a “failure” and “hypocrite” for criticizing Venezuela when he has played a role in worsening conditions in Venezuela to begin with. Colombia had almost 10,000 people imprisoned, mostly for their political ideology.

The Colombian President Santos asked Trump for financial support for Colombia's peace process in order to create a lasting peace with its 52-year long conflict with the Revolutionaey Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC); the White House stated that Trump called Colombia one of the strongest allies of the US in the western hemisphere. Although being oftentimes demonized by the Colombian corporate media and elite, FARC has regularly placed pressure on the Colombian government to comply with peace processes even despite the frequent murders of their members and social leaders throughout the country.

The UN has confirmed that FARC has delivered over 7,000 weapons as part of the peace accords with the purpose of ending decades of conflict and start their transition to politics to continue their revolutionary struggle nonviolently. Furthermore, the US state department has provided at least $49 million since 2009 in aid for Venezuelan right-wing opposition forces who have sparked violent protests and murders of innocent civilians with the hopes of removing the democratically elected President Maduro. The US government has also provided $4.26 million for Venezuela through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2015 in order to fund organizations that engage in anti-government work.

The idea that “most sanctions” have “no impact on the Venezuelan economy” is appalling nonsense (FAIR.org, 3/22/18). Trump has extended Obama’s cynically declared “national emergency” over Venezuela, and escalated by directly threatening holders of Venezuelan government bonds, making it it impossible for Venezuela to “roll over” any bonds governed under US law (i.e., borrow to pay off principal when a bond comes due, as governments usually do). In January, a Torino Capital report on Venezuela’s economy stated that “all foreign-currency bonds are denominated in dollars, and all are governed by New York law.” Trump also prohibited the Venezuelan government–owned CITGO corporation, based in Texas, from sending any profits or dividends back to Venezuela.

The US allies Taraciuk and Page mentioned mainly provide propaganda cover for a US-led assault. Bear in mind that the United States, Canada and other countries within the European Union are supplying weapons and other essential military support to Saudi Arabia, even as it inflicts famine on Yemen. Why do you suppose governments barbaric enough to arm Saudi Arabia also target Venezuela with economic sanctions? Does concern over human rights and corruption, which Taraciuk and Page uncritically cited as a rationale, pass the laugh test?

Before the financial sanctions introduced by Trump, Venezuela’s oil production followed a similar pattern to Colombia’s: There was a fall in production following a drop in investment, due to the steep and sustained drop in oil prices that began near the end of 2014 and bottomed out in 2016.

However, after Trump imposed financial sanctions in August 2017, Venezuela’s oil production plummeted, while Colombia’s stabilized. The impact of US sanctions therefore became much worse, but also easier to calculate. It works out to $6 billion in lost revenue to Venezuela’s government in the first year after the sanctions alone, even if one assumes that Venezuela’s oil production would have continued to decline along its pre–financial sanctions path. That’s over 600 times more than the emergency aid the UN has just approved for Venezuela.

The “exception for transactions to purchase food and medicines” Taraciuk and Page pointed to in Trump’s financial sanctions is a laughable smokescreen. The sanctions deprive the Venezuelan government of billions of dollars to buy foods and medicine, regardless of whether there are dubious “exemptions” to illegal sanctions.

On January 02 2019 04:56 Nebuchad wrote:


Have you looked into where Venezuela was headed before Chavez came?

On January 02 2019 04:51 LegalLord wrote:

And so, would the following apply as corollaries that follow immediately from (your perception of) point 2:

2.1) Chavez failed to cultivate an efficient oil industry that properly took advantage of Venezuela's oil resources, resulting in insufficient profits from the exploitation thereof.

2.2) Chavez did not do enough to battle internal corruption from a position of power.

2.3) Ultimately, the concern of (1) dominates the concerns of (2), making (2) somewhat moot beyond the point of assessing the effectiveness or lack thereof of Chavez in a more abstract, rather than practical, sense.

Curious if that largely characterizes your argument correctly, since I'm not 100% sure I've been following this argument correctly overall. If so, I'd say 2.2 is the only one that's dubious, by virtue of the fact that the real world consistently shows that corruption is something you can never do as much about as you wish you could - especially if some element of that corruption is driven by external influence.

On January 02 2019 05:55 iamthedave wrote:


Indeed. What about it?

Please bear in mind that I've talked about, acknowledged, and laud Chavez for all the good he did. If my posts have been coming across like me ragging on him it's entirely because of GH's unwillingness to make the slightest concession about the numerous errors Chavez made.

I don't exist in a continuum where any criticism = absolute criticism. And I don't believe discussing the legacy of such an important figure can be done without acknowledging their faults as well as their positives.



Yes to all three, your summary is excellent. My argument on 2.2 is that the corruption in this case came from people close to Chavez, and it is virtually inconceivable that he didn't know about it, and that's assuming you ignore all the reports that explicitly stated Venezualan intellgence agencies had reported those individuals in the government to Chavez and he chose not to act because of their political experience and general usefulness.

The reason I consider this relevant is the prior administration is a perfect example of why government corruption shouldn't be tolerated (and the current one adds a neat bowtie onto that problem). Chavez was in my opinion in a fairly unique position of having both power and near-total support from the people that our own leaders don't. If Chavez had called out his guys for corruption, he'd have faced zero pushback. They in turn could have done nothing against him, because the country would have trusted Chavez over them.

And Socialism by its nature is weak to corruption because it relies on the idea that people are all pulling in the same direction. Not to mention every other Socialist state in history has fallen apart internally due to massive corruption.

I feel it fair to say that between seeing the bullshit from the previous administration and the entire history of Socialism on earth to date, Chavez should have known better than to tolerate it from his own guys.

But yes I'll acknowledge that your 2.2 is the grounds for most argument, and perhaps I'm being overly idealistic on that front.

On January 02 2019 04:46 GreenHorizons wrote:


If that's what you're expecting you're going to need to find something better than what iamdave is putting up.

For instance they are fleeing to border areas where the capitalist smugglers and hoarders (there are still a lot of capitalists and privately owned businesses in Venezuela) are exploiting their desperation (in part caused by their hoarding and smuggling) to make exorbitant profits and exploit desperate labor forces in the neighboring capitalist countries.

There's also this thing in the west where they portray people as "anti-chavez" to explain his expropriation of "their" property, then "loyal to Chavez" when they get caught stealing money from the Venezuelan people.

Venezuela is no utopia, but when it comes to South America in the era of Chavez he did a damn good job.

On January 02 2019 07:22 Nouar wrote:

Venezuela's whole oil industry crumbling, while it is the only thing of value they produce in a large quantity and make money of, ultimately putting the country in the gutter, is NOT a good job from Chavez. (and I mean the maintenance, qualified personnel and production levels, not the price crashing)
Giving money and education to people is good, but if you do only that, while letting rot the only thing that brings you the money enabling you to do it, is NOT doing a good job.
Having good intentions and thinking of the people in excellent, however that does not mean that you are successful. Same for Trump and all his tax cuts. If he keeps doing that every year, then the country will default at some point, USA or not USA.

Chavez did not do enough to strengthen the oil industry and make it resilient to crisis as it was the lifeline of Venezuela, he did not plan for the future by forcefully diversifying the economy of the country, and, while he was definitely no superman and most probably tried to do his best, doing your best does not mean you are, ultimately, a good leader that ensured the successful FUTURE of your country. Going all-in is bad, even if it feels good.
Trying to go too fast on certain things can have drawbacks. The drawback in that case, is immense. He should have build better, slower foundations. Venezuela is on the verge of total destruction, is emptying itself, the people left there lost 10+kg on average, and that is an awful drawback, annihilating the positive aspects of the legacy.

GH your irrational denial of ANY kind of criticism of Chavez is getting really boring. It is never all black or all white.

On December 29 2018 08:02 ChristianS wrote:

See, when you sweep the entire news industry into the generalization it's hard to follow you based on one example. I mean, when Jeff Gerstmann got fired it was pretty clear Gamespot had a problem separating its advertising business from its journalism, but that wasn't really sufficient evidence to condemn the entire industry as lying whores.

Like, Radiolab did an episode on Russian election interference. Am I to believe that Radiolab staff are all corporate shills reading a script handed to them by Warren Buffett? Or are they useful idiots for the corporate cause? Or does Buffett have some kind of kompromat on Jad Abumrad?

A lot of people thought the Russian influence campaign was a big story, in part because its efficacy was unclear (especially in such a close election). Looking back, I'd guess at this point it didn't have much impact, but it doesn't seem very likely to me that everybody writing articles about it from 2016 until now knew it didn't have much impact and just wrote about it to further their corporate overlords' interests. I don't know if that's what you're claiming, but if it is I'd certainly be interested to see more evidence.

Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics

As Russia’s online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results.

The secret project, carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race, in which the Democratic candidate it was designed to help, Doug Jones, edged out the Republican, Roy S. Moore. But it was a sign that American political operatives of both parties have paid close attention to the Russian methods, which some fear may come to taint elections in the United States.

One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

An internal report on the Alabama effort, obtained by The New York Times, says explicitly that it “experimented with many of the tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections.”

The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says.

The project had a budget of just $100,000, in a race that cost approximately $51 million, including the primaries, according to Federal Election Commission records.

But however modest, the influence effort in Alabama may be a sign of things to come.

On January 02 2019 21:56 GreenHorizons wrote:


This is one example of what it looks like. The $100,000 spent by these dipshits in a $51 million Alabama race is much greater proportionately than Russia spent for 2016 (notwithstanding a great deal of that spending by Russia had nothing to do with the 2016 election)

Yet NYT frames it as inconsequential to the race and literally calls it "modest"




www.nytimes.com

If nothing else Democrats should just hire IRA and let them run their campaign and save everyone about a billion dollars and beat Trump.

EDIT: To wrap up the point the simple juxtaposition of how much each group spent was a very rudimentary step that most corporate publications simply avoided in their non-stop coverage. Instead every number related to Russian influence was treated like a big deal and rarely if ever was what constitutes "an impression" dissected. Neither was the potential that many of those impressions were recorded from the bots themselves investigated. The narrative was that Russia interfered, it was one of the things that swung the election, anyone disagreeing has been compromised by Russian propaganda. More recently the push by corporate media to try to convince people that Hillary's performance sucked with Black people because of Russia and not her shitty record/campaign.

I suppose people could argue it's easy to not think to compare how much spending was done by various entities when talking about Russian influence but I'd argue they shouldn't be journalists/pundits making 6 and 7 figure salaries if they are that incompetent.

On January 03 2019 00:46 ChristianS wrote:

But "how much they spent" is a weird metric for Russia's 2016 activity. A big part of the supposed effectiveness comes from the deception of it - they're not going through normal political advertising channels, they're pretending to be grassroots activists and trying to trick people into following their will. In the stock market, for instance, I believe it's illegal to be paid to endorse a stock without disclosing that you're being paid to do so.

The side of this we're ignoring, by the way, is the espionage side of Russia's 2016 activity. Hacking one side and releasing all their private information is a big deal in a way that couldn't be dismissed by knowing the hackers weren't paid very much. This part of their campaign, by the way, was likely much more impactful than the social influence campaign, and for my money, easily impactful enough to change the result.

On January 02 2019 07:28 GreenHorizons wrote:
You think he could have done enough or are you also 2.2 ing that you think he could have done more although it would have ultimately not worked?

Chavez made mistakes and didn't perfect Venezuela, that however doesn't make him a bad leader and if someone is going to push that he was it's going to have to come with a reasonable comparison of what good looks like under similar circumstances.

I think it's fair to ask anyone who supports the argument that Chavez was a bad leader whether they think the crippling sanctions (as the comparison between Columbia and Venezuela oil production suggests) are legitimate (if they do). If not why they think they aren't having the desired impact of undermining the government and debilitating the economy? Or if they are why they prioritize Chavez's decisions about internal corruption over the overwhelming impact of US led sanctions meant to do exactly what is being attributed to Chavez's failure to replace workers and management of oil fields.

My contentions aren't irrational or unfounded, they simply refuse to accept a lower level of evidence than was expected by most people in this forum for positions they disagree with.

For instance, if this was 2016 and I was saying Hillary was a bad leader who was associated with too much corruption and I linked to a Koch Brothers sponsored story about how she had screwed over many of their business interests and a wholly unsubstantiated story about Chelsea having billions, I'd get laughed off the forum, but let a lib do that to besmirch Chavez and people think I'm the irrational one.

(tell me I'm wrong about this part xDaunt or Danglars, what would happen to you guys if you argued Hillary was a bad and corrupt leader and cited the Koch Brothers and a Hannity story about Chelsea?)

On January 03 2019 02:55 xDaunt wrote:

Don't suck me into this nonsense. Chavez was a kleptocrat on a completely different level than anything that even remotely exists in the US. He nationalized somewhere on the order of 30-50% of the Venezuelan economy, redistributed some of it to the poor, redistributed some of it to himself and his cronies, and promptly ran the whole enterprise into the ground. Not that I am a big fan of Ayn Rand, but Chavez was a paragon of her concept of the "looter." Because the US isn't a banana republic, what Chavez did in Venezuela isn't possible here. Comparing him to Hillary or the Koch brothers is completely asinine and suggests a lack of understanding regarding some fundamental economic principles.

And no, that Chavez may have replaced a bunch of corrupt fools does not excuse his own corruption and incompetence. "Less bad" is not the same as "good." There simply is no prism through which Chavismo can be viewed as a good thing. That brand of socialism is the pathway to national ruin. Only the economically illiterate see it as anything else.

That brand of socialism is the pathway to national ruin

On January 03 2019 03:12 xDaunt wrote:
The phrasing was deliberate. The implementation of socialist policy is typically a matter of degree. Countries that crank it up to an 11 like Chavez did inevitably destroy themselves. Lesser implementations will cause harm, but not lead to "national ruin."

On January 03 2019 03:16 GreenHorizons wrote:


But something like socialized healthcare would be an improvement correct? So perhaps the question would get a better answer if I asked, where (if anywhere) besides healthcare do you think socialism can be applied to our benefit? What benefits do you think it provides (when implemented correctly in your view)?

On January 03 2019 01:20 GreenHorizons wrote:


I was just giving you another specific example. How much they spent, how many impressions they garnered compared to the election in general, the significance of an impression and whether they can find anyone who reports being duped are all important factors that were largely or completely ignored.

As for the deception that was a big part of the story you're responding to so that's not different either.

It's clear they weren't investigating or informing people with relevant information, they were selling the idea that Russia's meddling was significant, not trying to determine if it was.

They sold it long before they had any data (as paltry as it is) to back it up. When they got the reports instead of stepping back and looking at whether it had been overhyped they took a Buff Bernie coloring book and some masturbation memes and did their best to convince people that's what cost Hillary the election.

EDIT: Can you show me any corporate publications that ever addressed that widely (and still) circulated fake news about the thousands that attended a rally organized by the Russians?

If not that seems like a pretty gaping failure of the media does it not?

On January 03 2019 06:09 ChristianS wrote:

I'm gonna be pretty busy for the next week and a half (I'm getting married on Friday!) so I might have trouble getting back to you on this, but I'll try to remember to when I get back. Feel free to remind me

On January 03 2019 04:37 xDaunt wrote:



Offering a form of socialized healthcare does not improve health care services. It merely offers a solution to a political problem.

On January 03 2019 06:35 GreenHorizons wrote:


rip ChristianS.

j/k Gratz and best wishes.



Really? Because socialized healthcare sure seems to improve healthcare services for millions around the world.

I have to presume you think socialized healthcare is at least a lateral move or are you genuinely trying to make healthcare worse for political gain?