Panama Rejects the Chavez-Obama-Castro Axis

Congratulations to Panama and its new president, Ricardo Martinelli

While President Obama partners with Hugo Chavez and the Castro Brothers to destroy Honduran democracy, all is not bad news in the region. Despite what our state-run media tells you, Chavez is a bad guy, and many countries despise him.

On 1 July, The Republic of Panama will enjoy its fourth peaceful presidential transition since the overthrow of Noriega in 1989. I was there, but I didn't have anything to do with it. I did experience the pleasure of having a squad of Cubans dressed in Panama Army uniforms jam AKs in my face as I was trying to make my way down Avenida A. It took awhile to wind down from that one.

Anyway, Guillermo Endara , who beat Noriega's puppet, has been succeeded by an unbroken string of men and women from the old Noriega Party (PRD) as well as various opposition coalitions.

Today, Mr. Ricardo Martinelli, conservative businessman and philanthropist becomes Panama's next president. Sweetest of all, he beat Chavez favorite and former Dingbat Batallion veteran Balbina Herrera, 59%-36%. Panama is not Chavez country.

Congratulations again to Panama for their continued economic and political success! Let's hope Obama doesn't get involved and screw it up.

Herald Tribune - Panama

Hugo's Book Club

At the Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a book written by a US-hating Marxist. It has shot to #2 on Amazon.

From the LA Times:

According to reports, the Chavez-Obama exchange, the book offered by the Venezuelan leader was in Spanish, a language the U.S. president does not read. Why Chavez didn't give him an English version is anyone's guess.

Maybe because the little tinpot dictator is too stupid to realize we speak English up here...

Forget that crap sandwich between two covers that dictator Hugo Chavez pressed into the accepting hands of President Obama. It's nothing but a leftist, anti-US screed that blames us for every ill ever visited upon Latin America, from cholera to national insolvency. You could fill a library with such books. Hating America isn't just a cottage industry in Latin America, it is a major going concern on the continent, second only to oil and mineral exploitation.

My favorite book of this genre was one about how Uncle Sam crushed Panama under his cruel, hob-nail boots for 100 years. The author paints Panama as a slave colony under our rule. It was a best seller in South American capitals like Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Caracas. It did terrible in Panama, because the subjects of the book saw it for the farce that it was. Even Panamanian leftists wouldn't defend the book; doing so would have made them even more of a laughing stock than they already were in that relatively conservative country.

Anyone who had ever lived in Panama, one of the few countries in the region where you can drink the tap water, knew the book was BS. Those Latinos who had never lived there eagerly lapped it up, such is their simmering resentment of our country. Anything to avoid blaming themselves.

Here are a few recommendations from Silverfiddle to counter such socialist propaganda:

Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot. Aptly named antidote to the leftist claptrap written about our neighbors to the south. From Amazon's review: "Three Latin American writers, all ex-leftists, attack misconceptions about Latin America and ingrained sentiments of victimization and anti-Americanism among its people."

My favorite, The Penguin History of Latin America. No, it wasn't written by penguins, nor is it about those cute flightless neighbors to the south of South America. Written by University of Edinburgh Professor Edwin Williamson, it is an incisive overview of 500 years of Latin America history. It weighs in at a little over 600 highly readable pages, with each chapter devoted to a different subject or historical era, and is laid out mostly in chronological order.

A final word of advice: Don't read anything written in the US by any Latin American Studies professors, Chicano Studies doctoral candidates, or any other so-called Latin American experts from the world of academe. The closest most of these people have gotten to their area of "expertise" is eating a chalupa at Taco Bell.

LA Times: Chavez Gift to Obama
Amazon: Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot
Amazon: The Penguin History of Latin America

Revolution Delayed

Ever seen a tinpot dictator backpedal? Oil is below $40 a barrel, and Hugo's up for reelection soon, so he's trying to woo back the capitalist swine oil exploiters he's been abusing in an ongoing fit of revolutionary zeal:

CARACAS: President Hugo Chávez, buffeted by falling oil prices that threaten to damage his efforts to establish a Socialist-inspired state, is quietly courting Western oil companies once again.

Until recently, Chávez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with tax authorities and imposing a series of royalties increases.

Why is he crawling back, tail between his legs like the dog that he is? Because he's spent his nation's money on socialist pipe dreams that haven't done anything to improve the lot of the poor. (Are you paying attention, congress?)

Nationalizations in other sectors, like agriculture and steel manufacturing, are fueling capital flight, leaving Venezuela reliant on oil for about 93 percent of its export revenue in 2008, up from 69 percent in 1998 when Chávez was first elected.

Also, although rich in known oil deposits, Venezuelan oil production has steadily decreased because Fidelito didn't invest in his crumbling petroleum infrastructure.

But all the while, Petróleos de Venezuela has faced its own difficulties. It claimed it produced about 3.3 million barrels a day throughout most of 2008. But other sources like OPEC, of which Venezuela is a member, place the figure closer to 2.3 million and show a fall of about 100,000 barrels a day from a year earlier. When Chávez rose to power a decade ago, Venezuela was producing about 3.4 million barrels a day.

Revolution delayed is revolution denied.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/15/america/15venez.php

Vlad and Hugo Hit an Oil Slick

Oh, the many benefit of cheap oil...

Vlad the Impaler can't be happy:

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia would come under crippling financial pressure and may need to raise money externally if oil languishes at an average of $30 a barrel over the next two years, the World Bank predicted Friday.

The bleak scenario would mark a rapid unraveling of Russia's oil-fueled economic gains over the past eight years, during which time the government has paid down most of its foreign debt and built up a vast stockpile of international reserves.

Fidelito Chavez of Venezuela is now in a big hole. He blew the oil profits on buying friends instead of upgrading infrastructure. This is from The Telegraph back in October:

The state oil company, PDVSA, produced 3.2 million barrels per day in 1998, the year before Mr Chavez won the presidency. After a decade of rising corruption and inefficiency, daily output has now fallen to 2.4 million barrels, according to OPEC figures. About half of this oil is now delivered at a discount to Mr Chavez's friends around Latin America. The 18 nations in his "Petrocaribe" club, founded in 2005, pay Venezuela only 30 per cent of the market price within 90 days, with rest in instalments spread over 25 years.

The other half - 1.2 million barrels per day - goes to America, Venezuela's only genuinely paying customer.

"There is a bottleneck in the Venezuelan production system," said Mazhar al-Sheridah, 68, an oil expert at the Central University of Venezuela. "It will cost at least $32 billion to build another three upgrading units and take some five years, meaning that Venezuelan production is stuck at current levels for a while yet."

All this means that Venezuela has missed much of the benefit from the oil boom and, now that prices are falling, Mr Chavez faces huge financial problems. Nobody is sure at what point his government would be unable to pay its bills, but most sources consulted believe this would probably happen if oil falls to $80 a barrel. Yesterday, oil was trading at $79.80.

The fat little tin pot dictator laughed at the USA's financial problems, but was too stupid to realize that if his only paying customer fell on hard times, he could not escape a similar fate:

Chavez has accumulated foreign reserves and organized loans from nations such as China to shield his socialist government from a protracted fall in income. But economists say he may have to slash spending if the oil price, which was at a 20-month low on Wednesday, remains low deep into next year.

Chavez initially reveled in the financial collapses in the United States. But as the crisis has widened to hit economies worldwide and caused oil prices in recent weeks to plunge he has begun to warn Venezuelans of the possible impact at home. (Reporting by Saul Hudson; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and David Gregorio)

Enjoy the schadenfreude while you can. Odds are one of these men, or perhaps their grubby little gay-bashing buddy from Iran, will manufacture some global crisis to drive the price of oil back up.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D955PMC80&show_article=1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/3183417/Venezuelas-oil-output-slumps-under-Hugo-Chavez.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUSN1229709920081112

Venezuela: A Latin American Primer

We have met the oligarchy and they are us.

Most Americans don't understand Latin America. Why bother? It's just a confusing jumble of left-wing... no, right-wing... oh whatever! Google the news for Guatemala or Uruguay and you get political corruption stories or soccer scores.

Venezuela contains everything you need to know about Latin America. It was a peaceful, stable democracy where the rich oligarchs crapped all over the poor while calling it "capitalism" and "democracy." This paved the way for Colonel Hugo Chavez to knock over the government and declare a revolution of the people. He was jailed for his efforts, but won election to the presidency six years later because the rich and powerful didn't take his candidacy seriously enough to get a corrupt judge to block it.

Well, ten years later, the poor are still poor, and the right-wing oligarchs have been replaced by the left-wing oligarchs. Vanessa Neumann reports from Caracas that the Chavez effect is wearing thin.

Meanwhile the Chavistas, as the president's fans are known, buy so many Hummers that the vehicles have their own assembly plant in Venezuela.

Petro-money has seen sales of Rolexes rise sevenfold and clubs like Sawu, where the new elite pour Johnnie Walker Blue - that elixir of the ultra rich - into their Coca-Colas, flourish.

The fact that the institutions of privilege have merely changed hands increasingly angers ordinary people who were promised everything and have been given very little.

Reminds me of that line from the song by The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Russian Loser Visits Latin American Loser

Vlad the Impaler has sent his little boy Dmitri to visit Fidelito Chavez in Venezuela.

So the Russians will sell their military junk to a Venezuelan megalomaniac who is losing favor with his own citizens and bankrupting his country. I still don't understand how that impacts US national security.

We should encourage such partnerships in the hope that the negative synergy will hasten the downward spiral of both parties. This is a skid-row drunk and an a heroin addict prostitute who found a thousand dollars on the street and decide to shack up in a seedy motel. It's bound to end badly.

Here's a laugh line from the bloomberg article:

“The world is becoming multipolar,” Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said yesterday at the event in Caracas. “Latin America is also one of the poles of strength.”

That Russian spokesman is either stupid or he is laying out a gigantic line of BS. A continent whose greatest exports are cocaine and angry, overheated Marxist rhetoric is hardly a "pole of strength."

It's more likely Venezuela will end up being either abandoned or owned by Russia who, unlike America, is impervious to indignant cries of it's "victims" and the clamor of world option. This could actually provide a valuable lesson to the naive.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aQHOA3f_7wSE&refer=latin_america

Fidelito's in Trouble

El Generalisimo Hugo Chavez's Movement Towards Socialism is becoming less a march and more a stagger, according to the Daily Telegraph.

This is a lesson to those who think state control is the answer. Chavez's stated goal was to pry the country from the greedy grip of the rich oligarchs, who had rigged the game to where they were the only winners, leaving the poor empty handed. Well, he routed the oligarchy, but now the game is rigged for his Socialist cronies and the poor are still empty handed. And the infrastructure crumbles...

Meanwhile, El Jefe Maximo has his state-run oil company producing food, furniture and domestic appliances since his socialism has destroyed the private sector economy.

Oil production has fallen from 3.2 million barrels per day to 2.4, due to mismanagement and crumbling infrastructure.

"There is a bottleneck in the Venezuelan production system," said Mazhar al-Sheridah, 68, an oil expert at the Central University of Venezuela. "It will cost at least $32 billion to build another three upgrading units and take some five years, meaning that Venezuelan production is stuck at current levels for a while yet."

State-sponsored populism, whether left or right, has failed everywhere it has been tried. Capitalism and democracy coupled with the rule of law works every time. Why are we clamoring for more of the former and less of the latter?