Chavez claims victory in Venezuela election

[sirs]

look it up if you don't believe me.

The numbers I got from the 80s and 90s don't bear up your claim. The US GDP rose over 6% in most of those years, while Spain's rose between 2.5% and 5%. Per capita growth was also lower than the US. Both the US and Spain are growing slower in the 2000s, Spain continues about 2.5%, the US is slighty higher at about 2.7%.

Ouch.....that had to hurt

[Xavier_Onassis]

The US is not a Hispanic country, of course.

The GDP data dfoes not actually indicate how equitable the income distribution is, either.

In the US it has been skewed greatly toward the wealthiest individuals.

[Amianthus]

The US is not a Hispanic country, of course.

Never said it was; you brought up the comparison, not I.

The GDP data dfoes not actually indicate how equitable the income distribution is, either.

Never said it was; you claimed that data used to show the greater growth was GDP, not I.

[sirs]

[sirs]

The US is not a Hispanic country, of course.

Never said it was; you brought up the comparison, not I.

The GDP data dfoes not actually indicate how equitable the income distribution is, either.

Never said it was; you claimed that data used to show the greater growth was GDP, not I.

OUCH....Xo getting beat up one side, then the other.  That's gotta hurt

[Xavier_Onassis]

What a dumbass cartoon.

Castro has never submitted to any elections, while Chavez has defeated the opposition three times now. He doesn't smoke cigars, and I am pretty sure that there are very few that actually smoke stogies with a pirates skull and bones on the band.

Surely you can find something less silly.

[_JS]

Well I see his usefullness as a demonstrator of Socialism.  We have not had quite enough Socialist failures for people to have lost faith in it yet.

I would say that Sweden and Norway are very succesful demonstrations of socialist systems. Or the United Kingdom would be another excellent example.

When a disaster hits Norway there would not be a massive underclass left behind with a comfortable class of population writing letters to the editor that blame those left behind for being a "culture of dependents."

Venezuela, Ecuador, Boliva, Chile, and Nicaragua are reacting to years of very one sided treatment and blatantly racist policies as will Mexico and other nations. Is CHavez the mouthpiece for Latin American Socialism? Meh, I rather doubt it. I tend to think he is more bluster than anything. He is doing some good for the poor in Venezuela and he pisses off the wealthy and the United States because of the oil and the fact that he isn't a European/Spanish member of the typical ruling class.

I rather think Chile's Michelle Bachelet, much quieter and calmer than Chavez is a far superior leader. She is a socialist whose family was thrown to exile by Pinochet and his "Chicago Boys." She is a surgeon and even studied at Karl Marx University in the DDR (studied German) during her exile. She is everything Milton Friedman and Augusto Pinochet's authoritarian, barbarian political economy loathes. She has worked to restructure Chile's social security system and health care system, while continuing great trade relations for the benefit of the people.

[Brassmask]

Well I see his usefullness as a demonstrator of Socialism.


We have not had quite enough Socialist failures for people to have lost faith in it yet.

How odd that I see religion in the same light.  Perhaps the same can be said of, say, christianity as can be said of socialism.  It works really well, but there are people who come along and use it for the wrong purposes or hold it up as a mask for what they are really doing.

Socialism works really well in all the countries that have social medicine. Remember the words of our blessed lord, Howard Dean:  "What we ought to be demanding as Democrats, is what Harry Truman put in the 1948 Democratic Party platform: health insurance that covers everybody, just like they have in Germany, France, Costa Rica, Japan, Ireland, and Italy! Every single industrialized country on the face of the earth has health insurance for all of its people. Why can't we have what all those countries have?"

Socialism can be best described by the motto I chose for my film company. "Many hands make light work."  If you're a capitalist pig, then you know that buying in volume can save you a lot of money.  This is the idea behind single payer insurance.  What's the problem?