Friday, January 4, 2008
Say, why do you see all those Venezuela Joe Kennedy commercials on Fox News and the like? Jonah Goldberg wonders as well. Mona Charen discusses the issue here: JOE-4-CHAVEZ. I understand that Caracas has some pretty infamous slums. Did they donate the oil, too? Not that I'm not all for Americans first and all -- I could use some free heating oil myself, much love to the peeps in Venezuela -- but it does seem like an odd pose of altruism when you consider the big picture. Is Citgo "owned by the Venezuelan people," as Joe says in the commercials, the same way that North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?
I wrote a little about this last year, here.
Update: A comment from Cynic, who got a tech error on the comment form:
Saw a comment somewhere discussing how the crowd importing sulphur rich oil from Chavez are getting around having to reduce the sulphur content by putting it on the market as heating oil which is not subject to the same regulations.
So, if correct, Joe is getting +ve propaganda and screwing the environment to boot. Acid rain is not the same as CO2 apparently.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Charity from Chavez.
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I've noted previously the strangeness of a country with its own rampant poverty issues giving a country like ours charitable contributions (more of an in-kind trade for the publicity, but be that as it may...and not that we're not happy... Read More
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, p.44
I understand that Chavez nationalized the major oil company of Venezuela and has used to funds mainly to bolster his own political party. Here's an excellent article about Chavez in the journal Foreign Policy, from January, 2006.
www.mywire.com/pubs/ForeignPolicy/2006/01/01/1111144