Hugo Chavez

The absurd headline at a September 20 story at the New York Times is a sight to behold: "How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil." As formulated, the headline is clearly meant to communicate something that is supposedly a surprising new development in that country, which, thanks to 17 years of Bolivarian socialist rule, has turned into a financially destitute humanitarian…

Over two weeks ago, the Bolivarian socialist government of Venezuela under de facto dictator Nicolas Maduro decreed that private-sector and government workers can be forced to work on farms if the military, which is now responsible for food production and distribution in that shortage-wracked country, deems it necessary. Relevant site searches indicate that the country's forced-labor decree…

The latest installment in leftist excuse-making when socialism fails goes into the "It would work if leaders just had the right people handling things" file. It comes in the form of a Friday morning "analysis" at the Associated Press. Writers Jorge Rueda and Joshua Goodman want readers to believe that the economy in the Bolivarian socialist and once fairly prosperous nation of Venezuela would be…

It would be far too kind to give three cheers to CNN for exposing the disastrous conditions in a children's hospital in Caracas, Venezuela caused by over 15 years of Bolivarian socialism in a July 13 broadcast report. The network gets one hearty cheer for the detailed report's existence. It lost a chance for a second cheer when it failed to mention the country's socialist form of government…

Monday’s lead New York Times story by the paper’s Andes bureau chief Nicholas Casey was a grim report on the ongoing societal collapse of Venezuela: “Pillaging by Venezuelans Reveals Depth of Hunger.” But in typical media fashion, Casey managed to avoid the S-word -- socialism -- for almost all his report, and in an interview for NPR's Fresh Air actually blamed “consumerism” for the country’s…

On May 1, the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl warned: "We ignore Venezuela’s imminent implosion at our peril," noting that the South American nation of 30 million "has descended into a dystopia where food, medicine, water and electric power are critically scarce." Given the dire humanitarian crisis which has enveloped that country, broadcast media coverage during the ensuing seven weeks,…

If form holds, the Democratic Party's presidential candidates in the U.S. will continue to spout various forms of socialism and class warfare as the answers to this nation's woes in hopes of buying enough "free stuff" votes to hang on to the White House. Venezuela's apparent imminent economic collapse poses a problem for this strategy. The country's problems are the direct result of 15 years of…

En un evidente intento de facilitar un mejor entendimiento de su teleaudiencia a la popularidad de Donald Trump entre el electorado estadounidense, el principal noticiero vespertino de Univisión consultó a dos académicos de tendencia izquierdista, radicados en Washington, que compararon a Trump con líderes populistas de Latinoamérica, quienes también recientemente han apelado al amplio…

In an evident attempt to help their viewers get a handle on the popularity of Donald Trump among the U.S. electorate, Univision’s principal evening newscast recently consulted two left-leaning, Washington-based academics who compared Trump to outsider, populist leaders in Latin America who have also recently successfully appealed to widespread voter dissatisfaction with politics as usual,…

It's amazing how any reporter can cover the deepening economic crisis in Venezuela without saying a word about how the country got there. But Associated Press reporter Hannah Dreier was up to the task. In a bizarre, sickening November 20 report on how its people are having to get "creative" in the face of chronic shortages of basic goods to get by, she acted as if those shortages — and the over…

On April 1 for its April 2 print edition, the New York Times allowed Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to hold forth in an op-ed about how wondrously the country has been ruled since 1998, mostly by the late Bolivarian thug Hugo Chavez and during the past year by himself. Maduro's piece made the Times's print edition. The Times posted letters objecting to Maduro's characterizations of his…

Sean Penn usually throws punches at paparazzi, but Kevin Spacey may want to watch for him on the Red Carpet, even though they've starred together in "Hurlyburly." On his blog, Kevin Spacey expressed fervent support for the opposition protesters to Venezuelan president Maduro, the successor of Penn's favorite dictator, Hugo Chavez. Spacey met for three hours with Chavez in Caracas 2007.

Pushed back from the headlines, massive protests against the repressive Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela continue. So do the killings by the "colectivos." If this group of thugs enforcing Maduoro's Chavista socialist nightmare were instead right-wing paramilitary types, they would long since have been christened "death squads" and garnered international attention. A story about the…

In a mild shock -- mild because it's mentioned before the elections, but probably won't be when it really matters after the polls close -- Frank Bajak and Jorge Rueda at the Associated Press, in a story about how the last opposition TV station in Venezuela is being sold to an insurance magnate who is reportedly "friendly with government," noted the extraordinary handicaps that Venezuela's…