Venezuela Via Twitter
Here are some Tweets on the elections in Venezuela.
Le Huffington Post da ganador a Chavez! http://ow.ly/ehWtL — The Huffington Post calls it for Chavez.
Chavez supporters party on anticipated win in Venezuela vote
El Pais says he is leading by a million votes according to the ‘official’ results. “Las filtraciones del Consejo Electoral dan más de un millón de votos de ventaja al presidente”.
Intrade has closed predicting an almost certain Chavez win.
Looks like Chavez’s supporters were right to celebrate early. Hmm. What does that teach the world, if anything?
Cory lost to Marcos as well in the last election he supervised. It didn’t buy him much time. He was gone in a few months.
In late 1985, when President Marcos called for a snap election, Aquino ran for president with former senator Salvador Laurel as her vice-presidential running mate. After the elections were held on February 7, 1986, and the Batasang Pambansa proclaimed Marcos the winner in the elections, she called for massive civil disobedience protests, declaring herself as having been cheated and as the real winner in the elections. Filipinos enthusiastically heeded her call and rallied behind her. These events eventually led to the ousting of Marcos and the installation of Aquino as President of the Philippines on February 25, 1986 through the “People Power Revolution”.
My guess is that Chavez is fatally wounded. Whatever his official votes say he is now hated by the Venezuelan people — or by a lot of them at least. The interesting question now is whether the US administration will support him. Obama probably will. He may hang back a few days until the stink dies down, but it is unlikely that he’ll do any more than nod to the dissenters.
All in all it’s been a good day for the basics of political change. The Left dies hard, but it does die. The most important thing is never to accept its declarations of victory at face value and never give up. It’s not over just because they say it is.
Mr. Erdogan described how an Islamist could participate in the democratic process. “Democracy is like a streetcar,” he quipped. “You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off.” That’s the trouble with people who think they’ve been vouchsafed some fatal vision. They are so convinced of their righteousness that they never consider that they may be wrong.
But reality has other ideas. And we are about to see what happens when fiction meets fact.
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I was following from Intapundit while wretchard was ahead of me. Reposted from the Chavez thread.
From Fausta’s blog.
We have reached the blatant stuff. What next?
Now according to Fausta former President Uribe of Columbia has released a letter detailing the bribe.
According to Ace, the exit polls showed Hugo losing, but within stealin distance.
The letter in the link above shows Chavez offering a 50% bonus of monthly wage to those government officials who will do his bidding. The last sentence says (roughly)
“With this incentive the government is confident that on Oct 7 we will see the reelection of Commandante Chavez.” How dare he? Why didn’t he just offer to pay their rent or give them a Chavez phone or something like that.
It’s the old bag of peanuts and bottle of Marca Demonyo gin plot I wrote about.
Blatant is right Blast.
When rulers parade their deceit shamelessly, the shame falls to the people.
We’ll soon see if Wretchard’s prediction of a Filipino style revolt arises and succeeds soon enough. Cory’s success was of an earlier era. I sure hope he’s right.
They had to keep the polls open beyond closing time to accommodate the large turnout. Same thing Harry Reid did in two Las Vegas precincts. Same theft of the outcome. If Chavez is forced to step down in a year or so, can we get the same folks to come to NV and get Reid to step down?
In the words of the immortal sage Gomer Pyle: surprise, surprise, surprise! What else is there to say?
Chavez wins, Venezuela loses…for now.
We wont know if the election was legitimate or not until Jimmy Carter declares it so. He is probably on the phone with Castro’s niece right now.
OT but with a Chavez type flavour. I tried to post a comment elsewhere on PJM and received the following response:
“You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.”
The comment wasn’t posted. Hard to understand because I can’t type quickly and I took a while composing my comment. What exactly is a speed limit for posting a comment? How can a comment even have a speed? If by quickly they mean frequently then I don’t qualify there either. Has
anyone
else
seen
this
zzzz ?
OT: It appears that the ACLU has been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/the-muslim-takeover-of-the-aclu/print/
Something similar happened to Greenpeace back in the 1980′s when it was taken over by communists.
http://www.attacreport.com/ar_archives/art_na_greenpeace.htm
OT:
Here is another more up to date piece on Greenpeace. The founder of Greenpeace talks directly about the take over of Greenpeace by the communists during the 1980′s.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/greenpeace-founder-questions-man-made-global-warming/
ss @ 10: “You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.”
I got a slew of those a week ago, and then they went away again.
Simply resubmitting the same comment immediately seems to send it through.
Someone put a bad constant in their code.
If you’re getting that *now*, I dunno, you might try clearing your Internet cache or something.
–
On Venezuela I have nothing to add, when the obvious happens, it happens.
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Chavez’s victory is not a surprise and barely interesting. It’s very difficult to campaign against free government cheese (democracy’s ultimate weakness). Typically tyrants like Chavez fail only after they have damaged the local economy to the point that the free government cheese ceases to appear. To some extent, that was the failure mode for Mubarak and Gadaffi. Chavez has the enormous wealth of Venezula’s petroleum to continue his misrule.
Charles @ 12 link to Greenpeace was interesting. I am convinced that Green Politics along with Liberation Theology were the brain childs of some KGB agitprop genius. The tragedy of the Soviet Union is they did not dream up Green Politics and Liberation Theology before their own political system timed out and imploded. The West’s victory in the Cold War was a very near thing.
The information contained in Wretchard’s link about “Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey” is very disturbing. The inescapable conclusion is the popularly elected Erdogan has deliberately abandoned the secular democratic system of Kemal Atatürk. This represents a disaster for Turkey and guarantees their eventual failure as a nation. Turkey was the single example of a Middle Eastern Islamic society with a functioning democracy. After Turkey fails, it will be safe to conclude that Islam is entirely incompatible with modern democracy. How we go forward from that conclusion is difficult to say.
The Real Clear Politics presidential job approval poll is getting interesting, refer to:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
The Gallup poll has been a consistent outlier for almost two weeks. The Gallup poll is one of the oldest and most respected of the American opinion polls. Is it possible that Obama’s people have somehow captured the Gallup Poll? I wonder how much that would have cost? No doubt George Soros’ pockets would be deep enough to foot that bill.
We keep seeing examples of where democracy is failing. Obama’s election as President through the machinations of the MSM has hardly been a glowing testimony towards the effectiveness of democracy. We maybe seeing evidence that political stability is achievable only through some sort of technocratic oligarchy (fascism?) that wears the veneer of democracy. I’m not happy with this conclusion and still refuse to accept it.
My guess, Wretchard, is that Chavez will enjoy a comfortable reign of power for many years to come. He has oil wealth so can afford to bribe the people he needs to bribe – government workers, the peasants whose votes he wants, the armed forces and so on. As for the rest, violence and the threat of it will keep people in line. I notice Chavez has been very enthusiastic not only about paying out bribes to breaucrats but also about arming his supporters. I do not doubt that they are prepared to do a lot more than wage lawfare at those who dare oppose the new leader.
Obama is no doubt taking notes and trying to figure out how he can copy Chavez’s success.
“OT: It appears that the ACLU has been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.”
This is an inevitable development. Muslims hate Jews and Jewish lawyers at the ACLU hate themselves and Christians.
OT: seeing and hearing reports of humongous “bumps” for Romney after debate, up to twelve points! As loathe as I am to believe ANYTHING from these pollsters, that sounds nice. What is also surprising is what a large audience the debate had.
I just can’t wait for Romney to walk away with this on election day by eight points over the average poll, and the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by the idiot press afterwards. Just about make it all worthwhile, that would.
” … He has oil wealth so can afford to bribe the people he needs to bribe … ”
True, as long as he spends some of it on good maintenance and solid engineering; the Saudis do this mostly. But the Mexicans don’t and look at them.
Chavez still has colon cancer and is soon to follow Korolev into the Great Beyond. Cheers -
I wonder if Assad gave Hugo a call to congratulate him on his brilliant campaign.
As Boss Tweed of New York’s Tammany Hall once told an opponent, “As long as I’m counting the votes, what are you going to do?”
12. Charles
Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder to whom you gave that link comes from a Vancouver Island family of longtime loggers and fishermen. He was raised in Winter Harbour an outpost community of about 20 people off Quatsino Sound on the edge of the Pacific Ocean on remote northern Vancouver Island. The village of Winter Harbour got its name in the 1800s, when its sheltered harbour became a haven for sailing ships.
His dad was past President of the BC Truck Loggers Association. I think that Patrick’s origins as a bush rat kicked in at some point and he fell off the Greenpeace wagon some time after 1986. He is persona non grata with Greenpeace now and one of the many go-your-own-road characters up here in BC.
23. stevesmith
Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder was also a scientist. It was telling, his comment that he found himself on a board where he was the only scientist in an institution whose positions were supposed to be based on science.