Reply With QuoteWell, that looks like a line crossed. Ugh.
Chavez gets his own congressional turnover, says, "Uh, no."
So when Republicans complain about the 'lame duck Congress': oh, it could be much worse.He has used the final three months of the outgoing assembly, in which he has an overwhelming majority, to render irrelevant the incoming legislature, due to be sworn in on January 5th. The centrepiece of this effort is an enabling law which grants the government the power to rule by decree for the next 18 months.
Well, that looks like a line crossed. Ugh.
Enabling acts usually are.
Did anyone think that Chavez's regime would ever end up differently?
It's a difficult time. He needs to make quick decisions.
I bet Cheney/Rove are slapping themselves for not thinking of this just after 9/11...
I have to admit I did, once upon a time. I liked a fair bit of what he did, but in the end he's gone to far and it clearly seems to be all about him.Originally Posted by rhinohelix
I doubt that. They always struck me as the sort who prided themselves on being able to manipulate the system as it was.
Oh please. What a snide and thinly veiled Godwin (of your own thread!).
Yeah, he is an autocrat. No, he's not comparable to Hitler.
Look at the thread title and Lum comparing Chavez to Hitler... this isn't a thread meant for serious discourse.
I used to be completely convinced that Chavez was horrible.
Then, out of respect for the views of economist Dean Baker who defends Chavez, I decided to reexamine his regime a bit.
I was still very skeptical but I was at least partly convinced that Chavez wasn't quite as bad as the US media made him out to be.
Now I'm back to being extremely skeptical.
:(
He's not a good guy and certainly not a proponent of Democracy, but as bad guys go he's still a lot better than the guys the US usually choses to back.
Exactly. That Western media doesn't approve of him isn't much cause for concern, since their political coverage is sorta like videogame journalism.
Except, of course, Chavez has been trending in the mountain of skulls direction for years. We'll see how many apologists he has in a decade.
As much as Chavez is heading for the full Huey Long, don't get up on your high horse. Remember we're best buddies with a guy who boils his political opponents alive.
I also seriously doubt in any scenario he'll end up in a Khmer Rouge. He'd have to work at it to match Pinochet or any of our other previous friends in the region, for that matter.
I wouldn't expect Cambodia levels of internal repression no, but the potential for sparking regional wars is bad enough. He's going to need more distractions down the road.
Yeah, he may be a rancid scumbag, but he's not in the same league as one of the leaders of the death-squad states, and he is in fact more palatable than quite a number of our other "allies" -- most people would rather eat mud than poison, after all.
Oh please, Venezuela is still the media darling. And, it's not like Chavez is above torturing a few protesters with electrocution and mock execution now and then.
Maybe it's different in Europe, but the only coverage I see of Venezuela in the US is disapproving at the least.
Benevolent dictators always look good from the outside, right up until they crash their economy and have to start digging mass graves to keep their seat. Absolute power blah blah.
H.
Hmn, I guess Venezuela isn't that bad when you consider we get long just fine with honest-to-god monarchies like Dubia and Saudi Arabia. At least the pretense of democracy provides contrast against the current government when it falls short.
You mean except when they get 20 guys to fly planes into skyscrapers?
H.
And that's why we invaded Iraq! 9/11 FOREVER!!!!
Well, given that invading Iraq gave us the ability to close our base in Saudi Arabia... you know, the one that we only established so that we could keep an eye on Saddam after the first Persian Gulf War... one could actually make that argument with a straight face.
We aren't propping him up, so any home-grown radicals aren't going to be attacking us.
Another example of where Chavez is heading. So much for free speech.
It's funny that the reason for pulling it off the air was that it promoted "political intolerance".
Chavez is real fat
He's just big-boned.
I bet in 10 years or so when I finally gets shot, or couped he'll have killed the same number of opposition members as Pinochet did. Hopefully, we'd send in the Marines before we'd let another Khmer Rouge scale atrocity happen in the Americas.
Now Jason and I just need to figure out way of making a bet on this.
What about his behavior so far makes you think he's lined up for mass executions? Pinochet et. al basically took over and immediately started murdering.
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