Joe Summer
Footballguy
1.09 Pablo Escobar built soccer fields for poor children.
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums
This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
Hugo Chavez is dead (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Mr. Cross
- Start date
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
Well, Castro and Chavez were both threats to democracy in the region. And Castro had that whole missile thing, although admittedly that ceased to be an issue after the Soviet Union collapsed. I agree wholeheartedly that Chavez was never a direct threat to the US, and most people on the right viewed him as more of a joke than anything else. Yes, you can find exceptions to that, but for every exception you find, I can find a Sean Penn. No need to play to the fringes of each side.
Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
1.10 A-Rod gave 90 bucks to a charity.
pittstownkiller
Footballguy
We have had this sort of back-and-forth before Tim, so I imagine that we will not be very productive here. What criteria do you consider truly evil? He imprisoned opposition, which is good enough for me. Now while Chavez may not of been all time bad, if he jailed people unjustly it is as good as he did that to me. Chavez other big crime is that he was in ineffectual leader that held onto power for selfish reasons; maybe the #### is Shinola argument works with you but there is no reason to celebrate anything about this man's life Look what you have written about him and you comically come up with that he donated to Katrina funds as a way of hedging your own points condemning him. You enjoy your gray world of hand-wringing and nuance, for most of us it is not to tough to discern who is good and who is not.
Jewell
Footballguy
The person has to have at least some affilation with the Tea Party.
jonessed
Footballguy
squistion
Footballguy
That ceased to be an issue in late November 1962 when the Soviets removed the missles (or warheads) from Cuba, which was almost three decades before the Soviet Union collapsed.
timschochet
Footballguy
FWIW I don't regard the Tea Party as evil. If there was a scale, a guy like Chavez who was an authoritarian dictator is far worse than the Tea Party.
I don't like the Tea Party, but they are American politicians with a deep belief in the Constitution and freedom, and as such are infinitely superior to any dictators around the world.
I don't like the Tea Party, but they are American politicians with a deep belief in the Constitution and freedom, and as such are infinitely superior to any dictators around the world.
pittstownkiller
Footballguy
:knockmeoverwithafeather:
Jewell
Footballguy
I actually agree with your take that very few people are pure evil, and one man's evil leader is another man's great leader. I once made a similar argument regarding Castro who is further along the evil scale than Chavez.
timschochet
Footballguy
People do this all the time and it really bugs the crap out of me. The right compares Obama to communists or socialists. The left compares social conservatives to the Taliban. You cannot compare anyone in the mainstream of American politics to extremist forces in control of other nations. We (American politicos) all have much more in common than we have differences.
Don't let the politicians hear you. They'll tell us that anybody on the other side of the aisle is the embodiment of pure evil (since we're throwing that word around anyway, why not?), when in fact if they stopped, sat down with each other and discussed the issues like humans, they might actually get some stuff done.
Fennis
Footballguy
Hang 10
Footballguy
You almost start world war 3 and people never let you hear the end of it.
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
Serious question. What did Castro do that was so wrong in the Cuban Missile Crisis?To be clear, I am not arguing that Castro is "good" or "misunderstood" or anything of the sort. Nor am I taking issue with Kennedy acting to protect our interests. I'm asking what was inherently wrong with a sovereign nation allowing its ally to place missiles within its territory (particularly in the wake of the Bay of Pigs). Also keep in mind that U.S. Jupiter missiles were already in Turkey. I don't see how Castro would have been any more responsible for WWIII than Kennedy.You almost start world war 3 and people never let you hear the end of it.
Last edited by a moderator:
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
Cuba remained a Soviet client state up until the point that the Soviet Union went away. The Cuban missile crisis was a high water mark, of course, but it serves as good evidence for the proposition that our issues with Cuba weren't imaginary.
Last edited by a moderator:
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I don't think anybody involved in the Cuban missile crisis did anything morally wrong. I was more responding to the suggestion that we never had any legitimate reason to be concerned about Castro and/or that he was just a trumped-up threat. If the Cuban missile crisis didn't disprove that idea, I don't know what would.Serious question. What did Castro do that was so wrong in the Cuban Missile Crisis?You almost start world war 3 and people never let you hear the end of it.
Last edited by a moderator:
Hang 10
Footballguy
Well, from the American prospective, he put millions of our people at risk of nuclear war. I don't blame him solely but he was obviously a big part of it.Serious question. What did Castro do that was so wrong in the Cuban Missile Crisis?To be clear, I am not arguing that Castro is "good" or "misunderstood" or anything of the sort. Nor am I taking issue with Kennedy acting to protect our interests. I'm asking what was inherently wrong with a sovereign nation allowing its ally to place missiles within its territory (particularly in the wake of the Bay of Pigs). Also keep in mind that U.S. Jupiter missiles were already in Turkey. I don't see how Castro would have been any more responsible for WWIII than Kennedy.You almost start world war 3 and people never let you hear the end of it.
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
No. I understood your point. I was reponding to Hang10's more narrow point.I can think of lots of things that people could legitimately say about Fidel Castro when timsochet points out that he couldn't be all bad because he loved baseball.And if someone else were to claim that he had been elevated to a national security boogeyman, it makes sense to point out the Cuban Missile Crisis and Cuba's proximity to the United States (although I would say that Cuba increasingly served as an irrational boogeyman in the era where ICBMs were common and MIRV's were sitting on subs off the coast anyway). All that's fine.Similarly, I'm fine with most criticisms of Chavez. Most liberals view him as a joke too. It's hard to find a lot of Brookings Institute white papers calling for the nationalization of industries. But I also felt he was held up too often (and not only by conservatives) as a boogeyman.I don't think anybody involved in the Cuban missile crisis did anything morally wrong. I was more responding to the suggestion that we never had any legitimate reason to be concerned about Castro and/or that he was just a trumped-up threat. If the Cuban missile crisis didn't disprove that idea, I don't know what would.Serious question. What did Castro do that was so wrong in the Cuban Missile Crisis?You almost start world war 3 and people never let you hear the end of it.
mr roboto
Footballguy
The Z Machine
Footballguy
Chávez was 10000000% worse for his own country than he was a threat to the USA. Let's just support democracy there and hope that a more reasonable person gets elected this time.
For the record, I have family there, have visited multiple times. I think Chávez was legitimately elected, and has been a disaster for that country.
For the record, I have family there, have visited multiple times. I think Chávez was legitimately elected, and has been a disaster for that country.
T Bell
Footballguy
He's a complete clown who essentially destroyed his country's economy for the sake of throwing populist bones to the peasants who voted for him. His bating the U.S. was essentially classic Latin American leftist dictator shtick which we typically and rightly ignored.
pittstownkiller
Footballguy
Sounds familiar.
Fennis
Footballguy
Sounds familiar.
George Bush did suck
pittstownkiller
Footballguy
George Bush may have sucked but it wasn't for throwing populist bones to the peasants who voted for him; most of his supporters actually had jobs.Sounds familiar.
Smack Tripper
Footballguy
I can't get one of the anti lefty folks to comment on this?'Smack Tripper said:
Fennis
Footballguy
If by jobs you mean playing golf at the club I agree.George Bush may have sucked but it wasn't for throwing populist bones to the peasants who voted for him; most of his supporters actually had jobs.Sounds familiar.
MaxThreshold
Footballguy
You give me one article written by one guy on a liberal website and half the comments of that very same article are sympathetic. I give you three distinct quotes from avowed Democrats, one actually a member of Congress and one a fomer POTUS.The fact that someone on a liberal website has to write an article telling Democrats NOT to mourn Hugo Chavez speaks volumes.
Here is some more good stuff.
Last edited by a moderator:
pittstownkiller
Footballguy
Yes; peasants generally do not have club memberships.If by jobs you mean playing golf at the club I agree.George Bush may have sucked but it wasn't for throwing populist bones to the peasants who voted for him; most of his supporters actually had jobs.Sounds familiar.
MaxThreshold
Footballguy
The very same job Obama has, apparently.If by jobs you mean playing golf at the club I agree.George Bush may have sucked but it wasn't for throwing populist bones to the peasants who voted for him; most of his supporters actually had jobs.Sounds familiar.
Fennis
Footballguy
Obama is a moderate republicanThe very same job Obama has, apparently.If by jobs you mean playing golf at the club I agree.George Bush may have sucked but it wasn't for throwing populist bones to the peasants who voted for him; most of his supporters actually had jobs.Sounds familiar.
MaxThreshold
Footballguy
Is this where you tell yourself that if you say that enough times it must be true? In any event, Fennis, don't do drugs.Obama is a moderate republicanThe very same job Obama has, apparently.If by jobs you mean playing golf at the club I agree.George Bush may have sucked but it wasn't for throwing populist bones to the peasants who voted for him; most of his supporters actually had jobs.Sounds familiar.
Last edited by a moderator:
To be accurate, he didn't donate to Katrina. He offered to do so, but the U.S. rejected the offer. Whether he would have gone through with it, or it was just a propaganda ploy, we'll never know. But Timmy thinks he's Santa Claus.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
He's right. Same foreign policy as Bush. Health care plan lifted from the GOP. Plays golf. What more do you need?Is this where you tell yourself that if you say that enough times it must be true? In any event, Fennis, don't do drugs.Obama is a moderate republican
I need just one poorly-worded rape quote and I'm completely on board.He's right. Same foreign policy as Bush. Health care plan lifted from the GOP. Plays golf. What more do you need?Is this where you tell yourself that if you say that enough times it must be true? In any event, Fennis, don't do drugs.Obama is a moderate republican
mad sweeney
Footballguy
Congrats, you found nutjob extremists that are well known for being out of touch with reality. These people are the "American Left" as much as Ted Nugent, Fred Phelps and Todd Akin are the "American Right". The leader of the American Left, aka the President, sloughed him off as a mostly harmless nuisance.
flapgreen
Footballguy
No he doesn't think they are evil he just pisses his pants when the T word is mentioned in his presence. Frightening they are.
St. Louis Bob
Footballguy
:headexplode:'T Bell said:
Sand
Footballguy
Chavez's effect on economic freedom in Venezuela over his rule.
John Maddens Lunchbox
Footballguy
'IvanKaramazov said:He's right. Same foreign policy as Bush. Health care plan lifted from the GOP. Plays golf. What more do you need?'MaxThreshold said:Is this where you tell yourself that if you say that enough times it must be true? In any event, Fennis, don't do drugs.'Fennis said:Obama is a moderate republican
Obama is to the right of Bill Clinton on so many issues it's ridiculous and I thought Clinton was way too much of a "3rd Way" Liberal.If you think Obama is a socialist, you have no idea what a socialist is.
mad sweeney
Footballguy
Most of the people that call him a socialist make it pretty clear whenever they speak that they don't know what they're talking about on a variety of subjects.'IvanKaramazov said:He's right. Same foreign policy as Bush. Health care plan lifted from the GOP. Plays golf. What more do you need?'MaxThreshold said:Is this where you tell yourself that if you say that enough times it must be true? In any event, Fennis, don't do drugs.'Fennis said:Obama is a moderate republican
From Britain's left leaning The Guardian, this devastating analysis:
"IN Caracas, Venezuela, you could tell a summit meeting mattered to Hugo Chávez when government workers touched up the city’s rubble. Before dignitaries arrived, teams with buckets and brushes would paint bright yellow lines along the route from the airport into the capital, trying to compensate for the roads’ dilapidation with flashes of color. For really big events — say, a visit by Russia’s president — workers would make an extra effort, by also painting the rocks and debris that filled potholes. Seated in their armor-plated cars with tinted windows, the Russians might not have noticed the glistening golden nuggets, but they would surely have recognized the idea of the Potemkin village.
After oil wealth, theatrical flair was the greatest asset of Mr. Chávez, the president of Venezuela since 1999, who died Tuesday from cancer. His dramatic sense of his own significance helped bring him to power as the reincarnation of the liberator Simón Bolívar — he even renamed the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. That same dramatic flair deeply divided Venezuelans as he postured on the world stage and talked of restoring equilibrium between the rich countries and the rest of the world. It now obscures his real legacy, which is far less dramatic than he would have hoped. In fact, it’s mundane. Mr. Chávez, in the final analysis, was an awful manager.
The legacy of his 14-year “socialist revolution” is apparent across Venezuela: the decay, dysfunction and blight that afflict the economy and every state institution. The endless debate about whether Mr. Chávez was a dictator or democrat — he was in fact a hybrid, an elected autocrat — distracted attention, at home and abroad, from the more prosaic issue of competence. Mr. Chávez was a brilliant politician and a disastrous ruler. He leaves Venezuela a ruin, and his death plunges its roughly 30 million citizens into profound uncertainty.
Mr. Chávez’s failures did more damage than ideology, which was never as extremist as he or his detractors made out, something all too evident in the Venezuela he bequeaths. The once mighty factories of Ciudad Guayana, an industrial hub by the Orinoco River that M.I.T. and Harvard architects planned in the 1960s, are rusting and wheezing, some shut, others at half-capacity. “The world economic crisis hit us,” Rada Gamluch, the director of the aluminum plant Venalum, and a loyal chavista, told me on his balcony overlooking the decay. He corrected himself. “The capitalist crisis hit us.”
Actually, it was bungling by Chávez-appointed business directors who tried to impose pseudo-Marxist principles, only to be later replaced by opportunists and crooks, that hit Ciudad Guayana. Underinvestment and ineptitude hit hydropower stations and the electricity grid, causing weekly blackouts that continue to darken cities, fry electrical equipment, silence machinery and require de facto rationing. The government has no shortage of scapegoats: its own workers, the C.I.A. and even cable-gnawing possums.
Reckless money printing and fiscal policies triggered soaring inflation, so much so that the currency, the bolívar, lost 90 percent of its value since Mr. Chávez took office, and was devalued five times over a decade. In another delusion, the currency had been renamed “el bolívar fuerte,” the strong bolívar — an Orwellian touch. Harassment of privately owned farms and chaotic administration of state-backed agricultural cooperatives hit food production, compelling extensive imports, which stacked up so fast thousands of tons rotted at the ports. Mr. Chávez called it “food sovereignty.”
Politicization and neglect crippled the state-run oil company PDVSA’s core task — drilling — so that production slumped. “It’s a pity no one took 20 minutes to explain macroeconomics to him with a pen and paper,” Baldo Sanso, a senior executive told me. “Chávez doesn’t know how to manage.” Populist subsidies reduced the cost of gasoline to $1 a tank, perhaps the world’s lowest price of petrol, but cost the state untold billions in revenue while worsening traffic congestion and air pollution.
Bureaucratic malaise and corruption were so severe that murders tripled to nearly 20,000 a year, while gangs brazenly kidnapped victims from bus stops and highways.
A new elite with government connections, the “boligarchs,” manipulated government contracts and the web of price and currency controls to finance their lavish lifestyles. “It’s a big deal here when a girl turns 15,” a Caracas designer, Giovanni Scutaro, told me. “If the father is with the revolution, he doesn’t care about the fabric as long as it’s in red. Something simple, $3,000 — more elaborate, $250,000.”
Mr. Chávez summoned journalists to Miraflores, the presidential palace, to extol his achievements. But even the building betrayed the nation’s anomie, with its cracked facade, missing tiles, a whiff of urine from the gardens. The president’s private elevator, a minister confided, leaked when it rained.
Mr. Chávez’s political genius was to turn this record into a stage from which to mount four more election victories. An unprecedented oil bounty — $1 trillion — made him chief patron amid withering nongovernment alternatives.
He spent extravagantly on health clinics, schools, subsidies and giveaways, including entirely new houses. Those employed in multiplying bureaucracies — officials lost track of fleeting ministries — voted for him to secure their jobs. His elections were not fair — Mr. Chávez rigged rules in his favor, hijacked state resources, disqualified some opponents, emasculated others — but they were free.
As Venezuela atrophied, he found some refuge in blaming others, notably the “squealing pigs” and “vampires” of the private sector whom he accused of hoarding and speculating. Soldiers arrested butchers for overpricing. His own supporters increasingly blamed those around him: by 2011 you could see graffiti with the slogan “bajo el gobierno, viva Chávez” — “down with the government, long live Chávez.” The comandante, as he was known to loyalists, used his extraordinary energy and charisma to dominate airwaves with marathon speeches (four hours was short). He might blow kisses, mobilize troops, denounce the United States, ride a bike, a tank, a helicopter — anything to keep attention focused on him, not his performance.
Distraction came in numerous forms: denouncing assassination plots; a farcical nuclear deal with Russia (eventually abandoned); exhuming Bolívar’s remains to see if he was murdered; praising or assailing guests. I experienced the power of his performance firsthand in 2007 when, as The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, I appeared on his weekly show, “Alo Presidente,” in an episode held on a beach. Invited to ask a question, I asked whether abolishing term limits risked authoritarianism. The host paused and glowered before casting the impertinence out to sea and making it a pretext to lambaste European hypocrisy, media, monarchy, the Royal Navy, slavery, genocide and colonialism.
“In the name of the Latin American people I demand that the British government return the Malvinas Islands to the Argentine people,” he exclaimed. Then, after another riff on colonialism: “It is better to die fighting than to be a slave!” On and on it went. Christopher Columbus. Queen Elizabeth. George Bush. In vain I responded that I was Irish and republican, and that European monarchy was irrelevant to my question, which he had dodged. This provoked another tirade.
It was theater. As the cameras were packed away, and we all prepared to return to Caracas, the president shook my hand, shrugged and smiled. I had been a useful fall guy. No hard feelings. It was just a show.
Rory Carroll, a correspondent for The Guardian, is the author of “Comandante: Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.”
MaxThreshold
Footballguy
Jimmy Carter is an extremist? Joseph Kennedy? Rep. Jose Serrano? Okay, got it. There's nothing wrong with mourning someone who aligns with your views. Really. You don't have to be ashamed.'mad sweeney said:
Last edited by a moderator:
mad sweeney
Footballguy
Jimmy Carter, yeah the guy who has reached out and been an apologist for a number of controversial figures? Yeah, him. Sean Penn? Yeah, him. The fact that a very well known liberal website is discussing the fact that Chavez was bad is pretty good indicator that the American Left is not mourning Chavez so much as some on the very liberal left are.
Trust me, hiding my feelings from pond scum is not something I'm likely to do, much less feel ashamed about. Throw another work on the hook, the last one fell off.
