The big news item coming out of Venezuela on December 3 was not President Hugo Chávez’ reelection, but his wide margin of victory. With 62 percent of the vote—the largest ever for Chávez—the former coup leader is stronger than at any time during his eight years in power. Conversely, the opposition has reached an all-time low, losing in all 23 states.… return to article
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Reader Comments (195)This guy sounds like a real asshole. The last thing that Latin America
needs is stringent collection of taxes and more state regulation of the
economy. Another left Peronist, he has stacked the courts, rigged the
new Constitution and is establishing the usual Socialist Stalinist Cult
of Personality. The libs over here lick the ass of every dirty collectivist
tyrant from Stalin to Trotsky to Mao to Ho to Fidel, ad nauseum.
Uncle George, Latin America is going Commie while you’re diddling
in Iraq, sending the neoconmen on a one way boat to Tel Aviv
(sink the boat out at sea) and arrest this mini-tyrant & stick him
in Noreiga’s jail cell in Miami.
Posted by blondemike on Dec 28, 2006 at 6:44 PM Dear Blondemike,
I’m curious about something (unless the above comment is to be taken as snark) on Nov. 24, 2006 at 10:31 am in the midst of a heated discussion with Redhorse and Whattheheck you made this statement regarding Senor Chavez, “Nina and I are big Chavez fans.” What has changed in the span of less than a month to change your view on Chavez as stated above? Or is it that you just like to take a contrarian point of view on every subject?
Posted by rrheard on Dec 28, 2006 at 11:41 PM Criticizing the politics of a Latin American nation brings to mind the need to apply similar scrutiny to the poltics of the United States. The republic to the north of the Republic of Venezuela engages in similar poltical character assassination ploys used by the Republican party. Does anyone remember the rightist scare tactic that linked homosexuality and gay marriage with the need to fight terror anywhere in the world unless committed by the United States. US exceptionalism always fails to carefully examine all political movements in the US. One is baffled additionally why the Left seems to pose such a great spectre of doom. The Right in all nations consistently engages in a “Vernichtungspolitik” (politics of destruction) at the basic level of acquiring a basic job at a living wage to be able to earn enough to buy healthy food to nourish oneself and ones family properly. To go further, the Right truly has no regard for the lives of those they send off to fight in Soouthwest Asia to secure freedom from terror. Although proven useless, the bravado of the Right, concludes that the US will remain as long as possible. That means more money will be drained from programs that could promote real educational opportunities and provide health care ofr millions of US citizens and that more men in the all volunteer army commanded by a draft dodger will die and their families will be devastated. Chavez uses his nation’s wealth to alleviate suffering of those historically excluded - the poor, the mestizos, the Indios, the Blacks who were purposely excluded by governmental policy from building a decent life with necessary food and medicine. Will the so-called Left do that in the US?
Posted by danvers-guerin on Dec 29, 2006 at 12:21 AM maybe blondie changed his mind, he’ll have to you why if that’s the case. i never changed mine, i’ve suspected this castro clone of trying to set up a commie police state a la allende and ortega, the cia needs to move fast here. as far as the radio moscow tirade which follows your brief comments, chavez is going anyway because the price of oil is tumbling and he won’t be able to steal enough to support all the people
of color on the dole as he promised them. it’s not the government’s job to pay for your medical or food bills, get off your ass and get a job. those various colored peoples did not build western civ but are a continuing burden on same. this planet is too small to support large numbers of anti-productive parasites. time for some of you to disembark from planet earth, not enough room on the ship. the market sets the wages, if you don’t like it, get more skilled and offer the consumers what they want. look at the people who created mcdonalds and walmart and all of
our great industries, get off your whiney leftist butts.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 1:18 AM Dear Mr. Hawaii Jack,
“Get more skilled and offer the consumers what they want.” Interesting premise. By becoming more skilled I assume you are referring to more education i.e. become lawyer, doctor, engineer, accountant etc. Maybe you should do a little more research into the history and consequences of unrestrained “free market fundamentalist ideology” because no amount of becoming more skilled is going to change the fact that engineering, and certain parts of the legal and medical professions (along with just about any production endeavor) can be “outsourced” in the name of “profitability and efficiency.”
So given the lack of fair trade and international policies that move to equalize the worldwide value of labor upward rather than downward (i.e. the race to the bottom) all lovers and believers of the free market rhetoric should be careful what they wish for because its either learn another language and be prepared to move overseas, or learn to work a cash register or turn down hotel bedsheets if you expect to not someday be a casualty of “free market ideology.”
McDonald’s and WalMart are great industries by what measure? Ubiquitousness? Degree of labor exploitation? Profitability? Contribution to American society by creating low paying part time jobs with little if any benefits?
Interesting that you devolve into the “love it leave it mantra” of every conservative bootstrappin’ self made man ever born.
By the way “various colored” peoples did build western civilization . . . maybe you’ve heard of the Greeks, Romans et al, last I noticed they weren’t lilly white like northern Europeans.
Posted by rrheard on Dec 29, 2006 at 1:51 AM the ancient greeks and romans looked like the germans today, lily white to use your term. as dean acheson told fulbright in 1968 the modern day greeks are no more descended from the ancient greeks than the current residents of flatbush are of the ones who lived there 300 hundred years earlier. the main reason for the outsourcing is that government regulations have made it impossible to make a decent profit here. between affirmative action which mandate hiring incompetent women and blacks to high taxes to the difficulties of even setting up a business in many states and cities to the federal regulation of everything in sight to the soaring deficits to zionist wars in the mideast the usa is out of control. we don’t need fair trade, we need real free trade and we don’t need eec, nafta, wto, cafta, et al, we need to just mutually cut tariffs and make sure the japs et al do the same. you’d be surprised how quickly if we got our house in order industry would come back providing we get totally rid of the commie green movement, the left has been in a conspiracy to destroy all us industry and then shift the blame to the victims, the capitalists, who create the jobs. mcdonalds and wal-marts are as great as gm and ford because they sell great products at low prices, they cater to the consumer. the consumers are the kings and queens of capitalism and those who are rich earned every penny by catering to consumer demand. people on those jobs get paid what the market determines their worth which is the only rational method of determination because it operates in the supply and demand laws of objective reality, nature. people take them because they are better than the alternatives and unlike trust fund lefties parasitically living off the fruits of capitalism while damning it most of us have to work for a living.
they have good bennies too.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 2:12 AM wow a racist bigot (“japs” . . . “incompetent women and blacks” . . . “zionist wars”). Not a real shocker given your views on what is wrong with America. First you are wrong about ancient greeks being lilly white. Second customers don’t create “wants” in society nor does business generally cater to needs outside the basic industries of housing, clothing, food and public utilities. Big business does attempt to tie ones consumptive desires to ones self esteem through extravagantly funded marketing and advertising campaigns which begin targeting consumers shortly after birth. Third, arguing with someone who believes “markets” exist in the state of nature makes me an absolute idiot. So I won’t try but I’ll leave you with this. By definition a market is something created by men with certain attendant rules to mitigate “externalities” produced by so called “pure free market machinations. Free markets have in fact never existed nor will they ever because contrary to your mindless analysis people in business don’t like to “compete” because the profit motive dictates that they game the system and restribute wealth in ways both legal and illegal because it is more cost effective than true competition. Prime example (which of course you will deny) is that any time any product becomes a competitive threat to any existing product that has larger market share the first move is not to “outcompete” your opponent by building the superior product rather the first move is to attempt to compete through a beneficial change in legislation favoring the player with bigger market share or engage in predatory pricing or use their superior financial/capital leverage to buy out and either assimilate or squash the competitor. Like all things in life there are exceptions. Sometimes, with a certain degree of luck, being in the right position at the right time and actually coming up with something revolutionary in the consumer arena, a success story does happen within the free market framework. Generally however it is an illusion. Look around you. Other than the myriad uses the semiconductor has been put to, what products exist today that “people demanded be brought into existence” that didn’t exist 30 years ago?
Posted by rrheard on Dec 29, 2006 at 2:28 AM your history is as off as your mind is. read capitalism by dr. george reisman, an atlas sized volume of over 1,000 pages, he has destroyed every anti-capitalist argument so i don’t have to. the market is based on the laws of nature, supply and demand. capitalism is the system set up by men which best accords with nature. read atlas shrugged by ayn rand.
i’m right about the ancient greeks see barnes two volume history of western civilization. all the other incidents you mentioned are stale old leftist crap that has been refuted a thousand times over.
Anyway, it’s past 3pm here and i’m going to the beach.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 3:05 AM I have read Ms. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Which apparently has become the “racist libertarian” bible in the 50 years since that “methamphetimine slut princess” wrote her overwritten manifesto. If you think dropping Dr. Reisman’s name will impress me you must be on the same grade of meth that Ayn Rand was. Why do you even bother commenting on a nominally progressive web site? If Mr. Sirota is watching I hope he bans you because the only place your Ayn Randian world view is going to get any play is in the “Olin and Scaife Foundations funded echo chambers” you like to call conservative or libertarian think tanks.
Much luck to you in the state of nature Mr. Free Market Bigot.
Posted by rrheard on Dec 29, 2006 at 3:41 AM Sorry to tell you, Jack, but the CIA already tried to get rid of Chavez.
Oops!
He’s still there.
When Mohandas Ghandi was asked what he thought about Western Civilization, he replied, “I think it’s a good idea!”
You’re not helping much with that, bud.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 29, 2006 at 4:19 AM Schmookler’s Illusion of Choice: How the Market Economy Shapes Our Destiny(1993) puts the frosting on the market-theory cake.
Posted by barkless1 on Dec 29, 2006 at 7:38 AM wasn’t trying to “impress” you, heard, just trying to refer you to sources that if you were capable of enlightenment would help clear up your twisted thinking or nonthinking to be more precise. probably like trying to educate a mule so i leave you to sit in your excrement. racism and anti-semitism are coined terms from the 1920s invented by the adl and/or the ny times (same thing really) there’s no worse bigot than a left bigot and you along with little beaner castro wannabe chavez fit that bill to a t. i notice you leftists are big on banning people and ideas that have the utter gall to disturb your inane world view. your the prototype left bigot straight out of central casting, rr heard.
luminous beauty, so nice to see you on this thread. churchill summed up gandhi as “that naked little hindu faker.” i believe that chandra bose,who allied with hitler, was the person who actually got india’s independence by fighting the brits. you people blame the cia if the price of bread goes up. if they really wanted to be rid of the dimestore mussolini-peron he’d be gone. but comrade bush is letting latin america go red while the israel first traitors are leading him by the nose
in the near east. barky, who would read anything by a schmuckler ?
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 5:59 PM Jack,
Do you have a point?
Or is it your intention merely to spew invective and blame on others for the emotional discomfort of your own seething hatred and existential misery?
I thought Objectivists were all about taking personal responsibility for their lives.
Hard for me to understand how the INA drove the Brits out of India three years after being disbanded, not to mention Bose’s untimely demise; but opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got at least one.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 29, 2006 at 7:04 PM there was quite a long essay published in the journal of historical review in the first half of the 80s that documented how bose was the main thorn to the brits and why he was far more instrumental than gandhi in driving out the brits. i believe there are some books on the subject, at the time i did check out many of the refs in the bose essay and they checked out, can look it up again in response to your comments about dates. beauty i’d suggest you spare others your unsolicited advice on their alleged psychology because it will save you the embarrassment of knowing exactly how much your opinions are valued.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 7:42 PM Saying the CIA could get rid of Chavez if ‘they really wanted to’ is a bit disingenuous. The fact there was an attempted coup and it had Foggy Bottom, Langley and White House fingerprints all over it, is not mitigated by red herring assertion.
It doesn’t explain how after 49 years, the US national security state and its Bautista vanguard has failed to dislodge Castro, and now are reduced to waiting like vultures for his natural death, believing, quite without good reason or evidence, that Fidelismo is the only glue holding the government of Cuba together.
Your ideologically driven assumptions about Chavez would carry some weight if you could demonstrate some heinous dictatorial actions he’s taken to nationalize and collectivize the private sector, but, of course, he hasn’t, and you can’t. But, nevertheless you prophetize according to your own narrow and inflexible apprehensive misperceptions about socialism on how it is historically inevitable. I’m sure the irony in that is quite beyond your comprehension, but I thank you for it. It is quite droll.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 29, 2006 at 7:54 PM he’s stacked the courrts, he dissolved the prior congress, he rammed through a constitution that jails people for criticizing him, he imprisons
opponents and shuts down periodically opposition media and he has
his goons break up protest meetings. that’s a good start. if the cia was
serious he’d be overthrown in a blink, the ike admin put an embargo on
arms to batista while castro get tons here from private sources.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 8:46 PM i’d suggest you spare others your unsolicited advice on their alleged psychology because it will save you the embarrassment of knowing exactly how much your opinions are valued.
United States Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 12:42 PM
No advise intended, but thank you for taking such a generous personal interest in informing me what little interest you have in my opinion.
That’s so special!
It is easy to find hagiographic sources in just about any discipline that will support one’s own point of view. The key to developing critical intelligence is the ability to let go of what is mere opinion in any source, whether you find it agreeable or not, and develop a discriminating taste for what is rational and factual and what is just wishful thinking.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 29, 2006 at 8:46 PM agree with your last paragraph and i have found that to be true here in spades trying to reason with shitcago cabbie and others. since i already follow the procedure enunciated in that last paragraph you’re preaching to the choir in my case. maybe try taking your own advice.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 8:49 PM who would read anything by a schmuckler ?
United States Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 10:59 AMIs this your notion of objectivity? Well reasoned and comprehensive rebuttal? Anything but a dismissive and insulting, hand-waving and thoughtless opinion?
I think I hear a flat note coming from the choir.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 29, 2006 at 9:18 PM “he’s stacked the courrts”
He’s been the democratically elected chief executive of his nation for eight years, ‘stacking the courts’ with executive appointment is considered quite legitimate in this country, yet it is something sinister in Venezuela? Excuse me if I don’t understand.
”... he dissolved the prior congress…”
Huh?
”... he rammed through a constitution that jails people for criticizing him”
...or could concievably even though Chavez hasn’t jailed anyone under those provisions. And by ‘rammed through’, you mean approved by 72% of the electorate in a special election , right?
”...he imprisons…opponents
When they break the law by plotting and attempting the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government, collude with foriegn governments to that end, or assassinate government officials? How gauche!
...and shuts down periodically opposition media…”
When they openly flaut laws designed to protect fair and open elections? Again, what cojones on this bastardo!
”...his goons break up protest meetings.
His goons? Under his direct orders? This is one of those tropical Latin American countries, y’know. Political violence does flair up from time to time from all parties. If there’s been some kind of overwhelming omnipresent practice of political intimidation from the government, it hasn’t been obvious enough to force the opposition into armed rebellion, has it? It would seem the opposition has given up that idea and chosen to participate in rather than merely obstruct the democratic process.
if the cia was serious he’d be overthrown in a blink.
Yes! The CIA is so unserious. Just a bunch of clowns. They sure make me laugh.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 29, 2006 at 10:02 PM frankly, i have no interest in your selective criticism when you let the atrocities by chicago cab, wth, redhorse, et al, go uncriticized.
no us prez ever dissolved the congress or the supreme court. hitler was democratically elected as have been many other tyrants, so what ? chavez went way beyond mere appointments, he dissolved the old supreme court and congress precisely so he could ram through his constitution giving himself great powers including the right to imprison all critics who insult him. what laws are the media flouting ? i don’t see the press shut down here because they displease bush. now i don’t know if he personally meetings broken up or not but obviously he has created a climate where his supporters feel free to do so. sounds like a dictator to me but you know this after supporting castro, ortega, the grenadan stalinists, allende’s attempt to establish a cuba in chile (touching his suicide from fidel’s gun to him) and probably mao, ho, stalin and pol pot earlier. you lefties never learn a thing.
the cia does make a lot of us laugh with their bumbling.
i was funning barky on the name but some humorless oafs on the left never get it.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 10:45 PM It would be nice if you could link a few sources for your assertions.
It you read the article I linked to, which even though on an arguably pro-Chavez site is careful to fairly present opposition claims, you will find that Chavez did not dissolve the legislature, but after the new constitution went into effect a new legislature was elected. This was done with the agreement of the pre-existing Supreme Court, which to my knowledge has never been dissolved by Chavez. I believe the constitution gives that power to the legislative branch, but I don’t believe it has ever been acted upon.
However, Carmona, Foggy Bottom’s boy of the hour, dissolved the courts, the legislature, and the constitution, all with the immediate applause and approval of the White House.
It’s this kind of exceptionalism that makes me wonder about your objectivity. Or did you just not know that happened in the coup attempt?
The opposition media was flouting a law which proscibed reporting exit polling before the polls closed. Something the media in this country is smart enough to have figured out they should do voluntarily. Not only were they reporting such, but the polling they were reporting was bogus. As far as I know, none were shut down for more than a few hours.
Hitler was elected as a representative to the Bund. However, he became Chancellor by appointment.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 29, 2006 at 11:46 PM the site you referred me is the usual pro-communist one that i’ve seen with other tyrants such as castro, ortega, bishop and would be tyrant allende. after you have been through many times before you get used to a pattern. I can’t remember everything that happened in the very brief coup but my understanding is that they were trying to undo chavez’s own illegal measures. every nonleft media observer to caracas has reported on his dictatorial tendencies and efforts to mobilize goon squads to shut down opponents. i get the strong impression that you will believe what you want to believe because you habitually give the commies the beneft of the doubt. ok but let’s don’t pretend great objectivity here.
your right about hitler and the chancery but no historian doubts that he could have been elected by a landslide any time after 1933. so could castro after 1960 but we’re not a democracy anyway but a limited republican govt. unfortunately we’ve become an empire since wilson and maybe mckinley before him. certainly from fdr on. don’t expect me to defend the bulk of us foreign policy nor will i engage in apologetics for communist tyrants, elected or otherwise, like people like chomsky and you do. it sounds exactly like chavez shut down the opposition press to rig the election.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 30, 2006 at 12:02 AM i was funning barky on the name but some humorless oafs on the left never get it.
United States Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 3:45 PMSo I see. Making a coarse and witless, juvenile joke at another’s expense is your idea of a reasoned rebuttal. But that isn’t exactly what I was concerned with.
It appears on its face, the phrase, ‘who would read…?’ suggests you were dismissing the essay without even looking past the author’s name. This is why I question your commitment to objective reasoning. I would be delighted to be proven wrong, but you don’t give me much evidence to doubt that it might be the case you are arguing from willful ignorance.
Hope you don’t find this too humorless. I’m trying to think of a joke I could crack in this context that would be both funny and apt, but I’m coming up empty.
So sorry.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 30, 2006 at 12:08 AM oh, please ! spare me your pretentious, rather selective lectures.
I didn’t say i didn’t or wouldn’t read it, i was relating past experience
with this type of mentality.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 30, 2006 at 12:53 AM “we’re not a democracy anyway but a limited republican govt.”
Well, we may have begun as a limited republican government, but we’ve evolved into an essentially plutocratically controlled representative democracy. It isn’t hopeless to believe that there is room for yet more evolutionary progress.
“unfortunately we’ve become an empire since wilson and maybe mckinley before him. certainly from fdr on.”
Try Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase for our entry into the empire game.
”...don’t expect me to defend the bulk of us foreign policy nor will i engage in apologetics for communist tyrants, elected or otherwise, like people like chomsky and you do.”
I am not an apologist for tyrants of any stripe and from what I’ve read from Chomsky’s own words, neither is he. There has been a ton of ink spilled trying to show he is, though. Why do you think that is?
While I don’t discount the possibility that Chavez may yet become a tyrant, I believe that a fair reading of the record shows he is not even close. In spite of the copious amounts of uncensored opinion coming out of Venezuela by the most reactionary of his opponents, insisting that he is or has unsubstantiated ‘dictatorial tendencies’, whatever that means.
“it sounds exactly like chavez shut down the opposition press to rig the election.”
There is a lot of distance between ‘sounds like’ and ‘actually did’.
The former is a rather vague hand-waving opinion and can easily be dismissed as such. The latter is an assertion that requires some hard evidence before it can be believed. It’s difficult for me to imagine how shutting down a few irresponsible outlets for a few hours could rig an election. Particularly one he won by such a large margin.For example, it ‘sounds like’ you believe opinion is a reasonable substitute for fact. I have no real reason to believe that. You might just be too lazy or too pressed for time to actually present a well reasoned and well sourced argument. I don’t know, but your responsiveness to my questions is not reassuring.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 30, 2006 at 12:59 AM oh, please ! spare me your pretentious, rather selective lectures.
I didn’t say i didn’t or wouldn’t read it, i was relating past experience
with this type of mentality.
United States Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 29, 2006 at 5:53 PMStill, I’m rather perplexed that you explicitly reject this source and the one I linked to, merely on the basis that they represent a point of view different from yours, yet say you come to your opinions through a fair and unbiased reading of all points of view.
I hope you realise how problematic that is?
I apologise if you find my tone ‘pretentious’. Please be assured there is no pretense intended. I try to be open to any reasonable and factual argument. Unfortunately, so far, I see nothing resembling such coming from you. Just over-wrought and emotion laden opinion.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 30, 2006 at 1:22 AM Chomsky totally minimized Pol Pot’s mass killings in Cambodia and refused to condemn Vietnam’s reeducation camps. For starters. He
has glossed over Castro’s human rights violations and ignored the
Sandinista forced relocation of the Miskuito Indians. See The Anti-Chomsky Reader for a million more details.
I didn’t say I wouldn’t read the refs you gave me later today when I have more time but only expressed skepticism about the sources because
those types of sources have been apologizing for leftist tyrants for a
very long time. Not an unreasonable proposition.
If I had the time to document stuff I would. But again in this case I’d
have to go back and look up refs which I can do if I have the time and
I’m not dealing with a hardcore ideologue wasting my time.
Your “research” consists of a reiteration of sources which confirm your
pre-existing prejudices. Excuse me if I’m not overwhelmed with your
epistemological method.
Jefferson ‘s purchase was not illegitimate unless you think the whole US is Chomsky does. He said the rot began in 1492 and then he gets indignant when people correctly label him as anti-American.
99% of the people here on this board give no documentation for their assertions, you have given one highly problematic, partisan ref.
Don’t lecture me on anything because nothing you have asserted has
been proven to be solid fact. “I believe a fair reading of the record” is
an opinion, problematic and vague ,so who the hell are you to lecture me on the difference between opinion and fact ? Pot, scrub thyself !
Your responses neither here or on the other thread have been reassuring indices of your intellectual acuity.
Your last two sentences in the second posting are what psychologists
call projection, you have described yourself to a “T.”
Further dialogue with you is a waste of my valuable time.
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 30, 2006 at 2:23 AM Scorp, you have the perfect response to the self-proclaimed beauty in two words, the rest of us are fools for engaging him (?).
Posted by hawaii jack on Dec 30, 2006 at 2:25 AM Yes, I’ve read the Anti-Chomsky Reader. It is full of distortions, de-contextualized cherry-picked quotes, and misleading arguments. Many outright lies and a consistent tone of intellectual dishonesty. A style perfected by The National Review. Have you actually read Chomsky?
Pot/Kettle and psychological projection? I believe you’ve slipped into The Twilight Zone, bud. Unlike you, I express my opinion as an opinion, not fact.
Just the idea that you think I am lecturing you is evidence you’re not interested in reasoned debate.
I ask simple questions and you respond with ad hominem gobbledegook.
Thanks for playing.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 30, 2006 at 3:25 AM Ad hominem “gobbledegook”? Oy vey, LB, don’t you mean “wordsalad”? If you review the threads on this site, you’ll discover that the Hawaiian Jerk began posting his racist, antisemitic, anticommunist left-baiting rants almost immediately after Aryan Mike discontinued his own, which indicates that he very probably was banned from the site at that time. Unless The Jerk appears again, we can be reasonably certain that he also has been banned fron the site. His rants were even more racist and antisemitic than Mike’s. Michael Hardesty used to write for Z magazine. His rhetorical attacks on racism, sexism and Zionism on conservative neocon sites can easilly be surveyed with a diligent Google search of the web, as any reasonably intelligent neoconservative (oxymoron) has likely done. (Not you, Scorp. You’re neither reasonable nor intelligent.) Either Hardesty’s identity was hijacked for the purpose of sowing some acrimonious confusion among the ranks, or Hardesty himself has experienced an ideological change of heart (on the road to Damscus) and joined the ranks of his political opponents. Or maybe he’s just another bored graduate student or soldier on duty watch who gets off on jerking our chains and rattling the cages. Whatever. Whoever he is, he’ll pop up again, if he hasn’t already done so,.
Posted by Major Major on Dec 30, 2006 at 11:38 PM Right you are, Major! Wordsalad it is.
I was trying to avoid ‘psychobabble’. So tiresome.
You really think Jack is merely Mike’s sockpuppet? I think they’re just Objectivist clones. Jack doesn’t seem as well read, though the depth of their thinking seems equally shallow. Not that I think Micheal Hardesty is above sockpuppets.
I ran into THIS character doing his best to re-write history. Sounds a lot like our dear Mike. Some obvious sockpuppetry engaged, amidst numerous temporary blocks over his sometime lack of collegiality.
Are you listening, Mike? Do you have an interest in 19th Century Railroad Tycoon board games?
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 31, 2006 at 1:12 AM MM -
If you are so fucking smart, why didn’t YOU discover that blondemike was Michael P. Hardesty?
Hardesty kept telling me (not just me, everybody) how stupid they were.
That is when I decided to determine who blondemike really was. It took about five minutes. So then Hardesty accuses me of being a government employee, and using government resources to find his identification. But Hardesty left tracks all over the Internet like a D-9 Cat. Not too smart.
Hardesty regularly makes major switches in his philosophical positions, and is utterly inconsistent: racist -anti-racist, pro-Chomsky - anti-Chomsky, prone to wild exaggeration, and a first-order conspiracy theorist. If he is gone, he will be back under a different name.
Posted by scorp on Dec 31, 2006 at 4:09 AM Well….first let me say….Viva Chavez….good job…very good , and thank you to the people of Venezuela and Latin Amerika in general for showing the way to a more effective revolutionary reform…additionally , much appreciation for the heating oil discounts from Venezuelan owned CITGO.
Now concerning guys like the BM or the prepH Jerk…..
...........small minds are the hobbgobblin of confusion and the discontent that continuously recycles itself ( ad infinitum ) into the same ol’ elitist based rhetoric of the pre-information age plutocrats : this is a base camp for lackies who wish to delusionally buy into the muddled plutocratic economic agendas that are not only problematic for the so-called left , but are the main source of discontent within the ranks of the previously mentioned….( contingency of small minded lackies ).............
Basically guys like this are extremely frustrated and cannot come to terms with the growing fair trade policies of those who had formerly been the pedagogical oppressed slaves of that aforementioned plutocratical oligarchy….
Luminously beautiful one….a little psycho-babble can go a long way , hope my use of such terminology is found to be acceptable….
The Horse is attempting to clean up his responses to the trawl minded among us…..
Posted by Redhorse on Dec 31, 2006 at 5:40 AM If you are so fucking smart, why didn’t YOU discover that blondemike was Michael P. Hardesty?
Scorp, maybe Major didn’t read the thread where blondemike was bragging about submitting a 5000 word article to Z Mag. That was the first clue that got me looking for the Z Mag article but I don’t think it was actually published. A search did find mention of the same Z Mag brag posted by Michael Hardesty in 2004 right here at In These Times. Like you say, it wasn’t too hard to figure out if you happened to read the first clue and then connect the dots. Anyways, Scorp, thanks for exposing him and digging deeper than I did. The URLs you provided about Mike’s past internet activities were entertaining.
I am suspicious that Mike is Jack too. If Mike was banned it wouldn’t surprise me and I won’t be surprised if Jack is banned too.
“Pot, scrub thyself “ and “wordsalad” and Ayn Rand are all favorites of Mike’s. And it would appear ... favorites of Jack’s as well.
Hardesty kept telling me (not just me, everybody) how stupid they were.
Yeah, that’s his thing. None of us are worthy.
Posted by David in Canuckistan on Dec 31, 2006 at 6:20 AM Scorp, I scoped him out several years ago, on an earlier thread (11-10-04), when he was passing himself off as, of all people, Michael Hardesty. Check it out.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but he is smarter than all of us. He’s certainly smarter than I am.
On second thought, he’s probably just as smart as you are. No more. No less.
Posted by Major Major on Dec 31, 2006 at 6:34 AM The Michael Hardesty story is pretty sad, really. An object lesson on how unresolved personal trauma and conflict can drag any one of us over to the dark side.
I’m all for a little ‘psycho-babble’. Probably the best thing Plato ever said was that the unexamined life is not worth living.
I like your rhetorical stylings, Redhorse. If I have any advise to give concerning avoiding flame wars, it would be not to bite your tongue, but keep it firmly planted in your cheek.
Be cool.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 31, 2006 at 4:48 PM True…true…I will remember to stay cool , and even though my insults are meant to be hurtful ( if I didn’t mean it I wouldn,t say it ) I try to tailor them to the specific individual or the point of veiw I disagree with…although I am aware of generalities implied…my attempt is to remain individually focused…...thank you luminous beauty….
Now….was it not Socrates…who made that statement about our duty to know thyself….? I remember Cornel West giving reference to that statement being sourced by Socrates….the literature may be Dialogues of Plato…....?
Posted by Redhorse on Dec 31, 2006 at 7:22 PM MM -
Don’t take this the wrong way, but he is smarter than all of us. He’s certainly smarter than I am.
On second thought, he’s probably just as smart as you are. No more. No less.
Ummm, no! Hardesty once claimed to have an IQ of 145, but that is certainly a wild exaggeration. I am certain that Hardesty’s IQ is well within one standard deviation from the norm. At any rate, even if he did have a 145, I assure you that 145 is quite modest in this company.
You are far too easily impressed.
The key to identifying Michael P. Hardesty was his big mouth. Not only did he brag of his relationship with Noam Chomsky, subsequently disavowed, but he kept mentioning his wife/girlfriend/SO/roommate/whatever, Nina. Nina/ITT and Nina/Chomsky both lead you to Michael P. in short order. Not too smart.
Hardesty is an exhibitionist personality who likes to play games. He is not comfortable unless he is drawing attention to himself, indicating lack of self-esteem. Hardesty can change philosophical orientation on a dime if it increases the attention he receives. Some criminals play similar games, but they do not last long. Professional criminals will not tolerate a gang member who leaves a big string of clues behind.
Posted by scorp on Dec 31, 2006 at 8:28 PM Scorp….if you live long enough…all things are possible….For once , I can say….....I AGREE…...with a Scorp analysis…......
Havn’t heard from Mickey….wonder where he went…...Mickeyyy….Ooh Mickeyyyy !!!!
Posted by Redhorse on Dec 31, 2006 at 8:39 PM Now….was it not Socrates…who made that statement about our duty to know thyself….?
United States Posted by Redhorse on Dec 31, 2006 at 12:22 PM
Of course. It was Plato who attributed it to Socrates. I just couldn’t help making a subtle dig at Plato. He attributed so much else to Socrates that Socrates virtually became Plato’s sockpuppet.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 31, 2006 at 9:39 PM I go away for five days and the rats come from out of their sewers.
Scorp or whomever you are, 145 is 70 points above your IQ for starters
and 60 above the other scribblers here. Your adjectives are what Hawaii
Jack labeled projection on another thread.
LB, I personally corresponded with Chomsky for 20 years, read all of his works and the Anti-Chomsky Reader is 50% true which is a damning indictment.
Scorp failed to deal with any rebuttals to his Rush Limbaugh moronic
assertions so he’s trying the old ad hominem tack.
Major, are you really a stupid enough ass to think that only ONE person
could disagree with you and Redhorse ?
David, you are a lowlife sanctimonious fucker, so go fuck yourself.
Jack, you deal with these assholes if your still around, ok ?
Posted by blondemike on Jan 1, 2007 at 1:31 AM Neither the article nor the commentary to this point address the most salient factors concerning Venezuela. The author provides us with a fond leftist take on the political situation in Venezuela, and the usual suspects blindly endorse anything socialist. But there is trouble in the Bolivarian Republic.
Oil is a major part of the Venezuelan economy but, typical of authoritarian governments, Venezuela is consuming its substance, and is not performing maintenance or administration on its oil facilities:
> Financial reports and audits are two years out of date. Bank deposits from PdVSA are not being made to Venezuelan banks.
> Trained petroleum personnel have been replaced by party hacks.
> The oil and civil infrastructure are not being maintained.
> Oil production is declining.
> Venezuela has recently bought oil from Russia to meet outside contractual obligations.
> Mobil Exxon abandoned some of its oil properties in Venezuela when Venezuela changed the tax and contractual terms.
> Chavez is spending his oil capital on left-wing efforts in Latin America.
http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=31765
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1d5dfe3a-d653-11da-8b3a-0000779e2340.html
Petroleum is a cyclical industry. The cycle has been prolonged because of unprecedented growth, mainly in China and India. But speculation drove oil to record heights recently, and it has since fallen significantly. The totalitarians do not sheherd their resources, and cannot take a big hit in the price of oil. The hit will probably come as a result of economic imbalances in China.
Enjoy.
Posted by scorp on Jan 1, 2007 at 3:47 AM “the Anti-Chomsky Reader is 50% true…”
50% true is a fair definition of BULLSHIT!
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 1, 2007 at 11:24 PM Petroleum is a cyclical industry. The cycle has been prolonged because of unprecedented growth, mainly in China and India. But speculation drove oil to record heights recently, and it has since fallen significantly. The totalitarians do not sheherd their resources, and cannot take a big hit in the price of oil. The hit will probably come as a result of economic imbalances in China.
Enjoy.
United States Posted by scorp on Dec 31, 2006 at 8:47 PM“Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez is a more controversial leader, but his government’s economic policies are working. The year 2006 will be the second in a row in which Venezuela has a 10 percent growth, the highest in the region, after a 17.8 percent jump in 2004.
“To put the country on a solid growth path, the government needed to get control over the national oil company PDVSA, which is the source of nearly half the government’s revenues and 80 percent of the country’s export earnings.
“The opposition resisted fiercely, with a U.S.-backed military coup and an oil strike that devastated the economy in 2002-2003. But since the government prevailed it has been able to assure not only rapid growth but vastly expanded social programs for the poor, including free health care, subsidized food and increased access to education.
“Some say this is just an oil boom that will collapse when oil prices drop, but the Chávez government has budgeted conservatively for oil prices that were about half of what they are now.”
Read it and weep, scorpy. $36B in cash reserves
As cyclical as any resource pricing may be, with Hubbert’s Peak looming, petroleum prices are destined to trend higher and higher barring a world-wide economic collapse.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 2, 2007 at 12:01 AM Loony Booty -
Did you read all your IHT cite? Did you think about what it says, and what it means? Did you compare the IHT data with other recognized sources?
Where did the “36B in cash reserves” come from? I do not see it in the IHT article. World Fact Book for Venezuela has:
Reserves $29.6 B
External Debt $41.5 B
Venezuela also has:
Unemployment 12.2%
Poverty 47%
I am well aware of the Peak Oil arguement, it has been around for years. But that does not change the dynamics of the markets. Chavez has been spending his peoples’ money like crazy, for weapons, subsidizing New Englanders, and propping up South American deadbeat socialists:
Venezuela has now provided an alternative source of credit, with no economic policy strings attached, to Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and other countries. The dissolution of the IMF’s “creditors’ cartel” is the most important change in the international financial system since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1973.
The IHT thinks this is wonderful, but a drop in the price of oil will be devastating for the people of Venezuela. Which is what I said in the first place.
Posted by scorp on Jan 2, 2007 at 9:22 AM REWRITE! Goll-darn it. Where’s that copy boy?! I called for a REWRITE!
The big news item coming out of Venezuela on December 3 was not President Hugo Chávez’ reelection, nor his wide margin of victory, but that is was only 62% in the wake of the AD boycotting the December elections. They have rejected Chávez’s legitimacy and systematically opposed all his actions, primarily because every time Chávez has emerged victorious, he has consolidated political control (including a constitutional rewrite - where is that copy boy!?) and taken new, bold measures to marginalize his opposition. It is rumored that even the Iranian mullahs are impressed and taking notes.
Ellner just gets silly after that. Maybe he should actually start writing articles and stop plagerizing Chavez’ press releases…
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 2, 2007 at 12:42 PM jack’s back ! ok, nonbeauty, 50% accuracy is still batting 50% better than you habitually do.
scorp, here’s the scoop, the oil price has been dropping for months now
in most places, it’s more over here because everything has to be imported here. maybe rush forgot to clue you…................
cline, our favorite neoconman is back ! whoopee ! I half agree with you here except the opposition to chavez couldn’t find their peckers in a game of pocket pool.
let’s terminate this idiot dialogue and move on.
btw, scorp or whoever you are today, that 47% happens to be the poverty rate in santiago, chile after uncle miltie’s miracle fix, it’s closer to 60% in the chilean countryside though the official unemployment rate is 10%, in fact probably double that like here. also all the same people are running the production facilities, have a friend who’s an oil company manager down in caracas. production has not been plummeting and
they are exporting oil so far, not importing it. the cia publishes all the world “fact” books and some of them make pretty good fiction reading.
chavez is a commie for sure but you seem to pull your nonfacts out of
your asshole. american spectator ? weekly standard ? moonie dc times ? booeyfuckley’s discredited national review or is everything from rush ? a genuine shittohead.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 2, 2007 at 5:33 PM Jack?
Who be you and what rabbit hole did you jump out of?
Anyway, trick question: if Chavez’ opposition opts out of the election, where did that 38% come from?
Yeah, let’s terminate that line of discussion. Too close to the jugular.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 2, 2007 at 6:33 PM Scorpy,
The CIA stats are just a little out of date. Nothing surprizing in that.
The poverty stats are from 1998, before Chavez took office. Current estimates are in the mid-30’s and dropping, based on wage income without consideration of food subsidies, health care, or informal sector growth. You know, them thar socialist programs. Of more interest, extreme poverty has been cut in half.
CIA stats for unemployment are for early ‘05. Sept ‘06 unemployment was 9.5%, down from 19.2% at the end of the opposition work stoppage inspired recession . You see the trend?
Bloomberg gives Central Bank foriegn reserves as of Dec. of $35.9B. Are they credible? The BCV gives total foriegn reserves of $37.3B as of 12/28/06.
The CIA debt figure, as far as I can tell, is a combination of both short and long term debt. Long term stands around $28B with DeutcheBank estimating 8% reduction in ‘07. Short term seems to have begun down-trending as well. What is important is that cash reserves are steadily increasing and external debt is being aggressively reduced. They are near parity which is exceptional in Latin America.
Curious you’d say Peak Oil doesn’t affect the market dynamics. Rising demand and diminishing supply doesn’t affect prices? Call me an idiot, I thought that was the very heart of market dynamics. Maybe you mean ‘short term variability’ rather than decadal trend lines? You seem to have the perception that oil is just another commodity, like shoes or swizzle sticks and such. A precipitous drop in oil prices would happen only if international production and trade were to collapse. Not a good thing for anybody, much less Venezuela.
What you are not taking into consideration is that Chavez’ government is budgeting for oil prices at near half their current value.
By deadbeat socialists you must be referring to Kirchner. By facing down the IMF, he’s brought Argentina back from the utter collapse that resulted from neo-liberal policies. One of those socialist success stories you like to claim don’t exist.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 2, 2007 at 7:14 PM jay, if you want to terminate yourself be my guest, i was merely pointing out not the greatness of chavez but the imbecility of the opposition, much like our retarded neocon repugs here in the usa. btw, much of the opposition decided not to contest the election, not too helpful. i never said there wasn’t plenty of opposition but that they are being led by utter incompetents and again i’ve been proven right.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 2, 2007 at 8:17 PM lb, scorp’s figures are not so much out of date as inaccurate to begin with when they weren’t just made up.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 2, 2007 at 8:18 PM every sane govt SHOULD deadbeat on imf-world bank criminals. they are nothing but high priced mass murderers and the neoliberal capitalist policy literally destroyed the argentine economy. haven’t you read a friggin newspaper in 10 years, scorp ?
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 2, 2007 at 8:21 PM Jackie,
Please, don’t go away mad. You are right. Democracy in Venezuela is a sterling example of how might makes right. You still haven’t addressed where that 38% came from. If the opposing team stays home, why only 62%?
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 2, 2007 at 8:40 PM jay, half the people here or more routinely don’t vote. so maybe 25% elects the prez and even less congress. but i understand that several parties refused to campaign and if that is true then maybe they would have gotten more than 38% if they did. chavez has a huge support base but many enemies too. we don’t need to rechew this cabbage again.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 2, 2007 at 10:17 PM Jack,
Let me dumb this up.
Venezuela, under Chavez, stopped being a legitimate democracy when he rigged the process (and the constitution) in his favor.
Just as voting percentages are irrelevant in Iran, they are irrelevant in Venezuela. The criticism I have leveled is on Ellner’s refusal to “report” on the issue in an objective manner. He lauds the “revolutionary” electoral successes of Chavez without asking where those “successes” have been, at the polling station…
or at the police station.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 2, 2007 at 10:42 PM “Venezuela, under Chavez, stopped being a legitimate democracy when he rigged the process “
You have evidence of vote rigging, Jay-Jay? Or, as usual, just pulling braindead opinion out of your ass?
Are the recent gains by reformist Iranian pols in municipal elections just some ruse by the Mullahs? How devious.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 2, 2007 at 11:29 PM jay, provide some proof here or refs. more people vote there than vote here. can’t believe no mail service today on account of that lowlife genocidal bastard ford (east timor).
and jay don’t pull stuff out of your ass, the nonbeauty who doesn’t exist nor is bound by the axioms of existence, does that all the time and let me tell you, it is STINKY.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 3, 2007 at 12:00 AM As Jack says best, try reading a paper. Anything in the past 10 years.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 3, 2007 at 5:07 PM Jay-Jay,
I know of one moderately intellectual attempt in the press to de-legitimize the Venezuelan electoral process.
That was in the editorial pages of <u>The Wall Street Journal</u>.
. It was thoroughly and utterly debunked because of the authors’ profound disregard for the principles of statistical analysis.
If the Daily Fishwrap in this country has presented anything remotely as compelling (which, obviously, is not very) then I must confess, I missed it.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 3, 2007 at 6:11 PM Ah starboy, how about some actual references? It is a bit disingenuous to call for references when you do not provide them yourself. The way I hear it, it was actually the Carter Center trying to refute the statistics that actually gaffed with their own statistics.
Here is the URL (from that same Daily Fishwrap) dated Sept 9, 2004, that lambasts
Conned in Caracas
New evidence that Jimmy Carter got fooled in Venezuela.http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005586
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 3, 2007 at 6:24 PM The Carter Center has been repeatedly troubled by the lack of transparency of Chavez’ elections; the EU (another well-intentioned org that certifies dubious elections) backed out of monitoring elections because of the onerous restrictions that Chavez imposed on them; scholars have repeatedly criticized statistical anomalies in election results, anomalies that The Carter Center first refute, then go “oops, we forgot to carry the one” but allege that the anomalies did not cross the line into statistical relevance (those contrary scholars have not restated their analysis); after failing to capture power in the early 90s with a military coup, Chavez went for the populist approach; Chavez had the constitution rewritten to such an extent that the BBC and the Economist warned all it did was to remove checks and balances from executive abuse; winning his second presidential campaign, Chavez now wants to rewrite the constitution again, taking out that nitpicking phrase he put in the first time about presidential two-term limits (I guess it is a good flag to run up the flag pole when you are running for your first term); Chavez, like Bush, accuses the opposition of lacking patriotism and treason, but the most that the Devil Dubya has done against those treasonous opponents is to throw words at them, Chavez has resorted to sticks and stones.
I find it interesting that The Carter Center can question the transparency of Chavez’ elections, transparency that the EU cannot ignore, yet say with a straight face, “it looks fair and open from our perspective”. That is, unfortunately, an accurate statement. Think about it. When your glasses are fogged up, a lot of troubling details cannot be seen. But truthful? Alas, Chavez does have one saving grace, at least for the American liberal. He is a liberal, so I guess they can forgive a few democratic transgressions.
After all, he may be a tyrant-in-the-making, but he is one of their tyrants.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 3, 2007 at 6:39 PM In responding to the various accusations of fraud, the following comments were made.
The first is from Jennifer McCoy, (http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3157671) who directed the Carter Center’s mission in Venezuela. The second (http://venezuela-referendum.com/) is from researchers who were consulted by the Carter Center to examine some of the specific claims. Unsurprisingly, both conclude the elections to have been fair.
Surprisingly, both go out of their way to qualify their claims.
I stand by my existential “foggy glasses” metaphor - if you can’t see it, can it possibly be there?
McCoy:
In conclusion, the vote itself was secret and free, but the CNE’s (Venezuela’s National Election Council) lack of openness, last-minute changes and internal divisions harmed public confidence in that vital institution both before and after the vote.
Felten, Rubin, Stubblefield:Summary
After the August 15 referendum in Venezuela on whether or not to recall president Chávez, opposition groups examined the polling data and made accusations of fraud due to statistical anomalies in the reported election results that they claim could not have occurred if the election were run fairly. However, our analysis of the same data, based on simulations, did not detect any statistical anomalies that would indicate obvious fraud in the election.
We emphasize that a lack of statistical evidence does not imply the absence of fraud. Rather, it rules out certain classes of fraud. In any case, the fraud that is alleged is not the type that we would expect a cheating government to employ. In particular, we believe that the forms of election fraud that are most likely to succeed, such as voting machines silently switching some fraction of Yes votes to No votes inside the computer, would not produce observable statistical anomalies.
Electronic voting is more susceptible to widespread fraud than less automated mechanisms. The fact that the opposition is highly suspicious of the outcome is due, in part, to the choice of electronic voting machines in a simple Yes/No election. While we did not find any statistical evidence for the claims of caps on the machines or other specific accusations of fraud, we are concerned that wide scale unobservable fraud is much easier to realize in electronic voting machines than in, for example, precinct based paper systems.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 3, 2007 at 6:44 PM C’mon, dudes.
You are only going to get in trouble trying to make Chavez into a saint.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 3, 2007 at 6:46 PM An excerpt from that WSL report about Jimmy getting conned:
Mr. Hausmann told us that he and Mr. Rigoban also “found very clear trails of fraud in the statistical record” and a probability of less than 1% that the anomalies observed could be pure chance. To put it another way, they think the chance is 99% that there was electoral fraud.
The authors also suggest that the fraud was centralized. Voting machines were supposed to print tallies before communicating by Internet with the CNE center. But the CNE changed that rule, arranging to have totals sent to the center first and only later printing tally sheets. This increases the potential for fraud because the Smartmatic voting machines suddenly had two-way communication capacity that they weren’t supposed to have. The economists say this means the CNE center could have sent messages back to polling stations to alter the totals.
None of this would matter if the auditing process had been open to scrutiny by the Carter observers. But as the economists point out: “After an arduous negotiation, the Electoral Council allowed the OAS [Organization of American States] and the Carter Center to observe all aspects of the election process except for the central computer hub, a place where they also prohibited the presence of any witnesses from the opposition. At the time, this appeared to be an insignificant detail. Now it looks much more meaningful.”
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 3, 2007 at 7:02 PM it still is small potatoes compared to the GOP theft of the 2000 election
and probably 2004 as well in ohio according to a lengthy study by RFK, Jr
in Rollingstone. the economist is a rightwing rag, hardly objective.
at the end of the day who gives a flying fuck, jay ? are we with all the blood on
our hands supposed to overthrow him ? what’s your point ?
some lefties are hypocrites ? Stop the presses ! so are many righties,
so what ?
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 3, 2007 at 7:47 PM Well, Jay-Jay,
You were able to find the editorial I referred to all by yourself. Isn’t that special.
I’m having a hard time finding anything on the web about the hausman rigoman study at all. I originally got one (1) hit on google for ‘hausman rigoman venezuela election’, an anonymous political talk page. Now I get zero results. Curious.
I went to a New York - Caracas based site I know that maintains very thorough documentation, and my browser locked up before it could download. Even after closing and re-booting that browser, it now fails to make an internet connection. I’ve had to change browsers to post here. Curiouser and curiouser.
Nobody is making a saint out of Chavez, you charming old crackpot, He’s just not the monstrous bogeyman you’d make him out to be.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 3, 2007 at 8:13 PM I have been able to track down this interesting BLOG , from someone who cannot in the least be confused as a Chavista, making the penultimate concession speech on the matter:
Now CEPR - a propagandistic philochavista “think tank” in Washington DC - picks up this argument and uses it as a bludgeon to hammer at the Hausmann and Rigobon paper. Personally, I can’t hide my extreme distate for a pseudo-independent outfit like CEPR - which hides an extremist ideological agenda and a clearly partisan stance behind the guise of a properly sanitized DC research center.
But one thing I can tell you: the sky doesn’t stop being blue just because an extremist nut says the sky is blue.
In this particular case, Hausmann and Rigobon appear to have pitched CEPR such a juicy bombita that it’s hardly surprising they’ve hit it hard. If the cold audit was carried out on a random sample of “clean” voting centers, CEPR calculates, the chances of the audit yielding results in line with CNE’s overall results if the real result was in line with Sumate’s exit poll comes out to 1 in 28 billion trillion.
This is just a mathematically retelling of Dan’s Really Obvious Objection. What vexes me most is that I know that Rigobon personally had this argument put to him - and rather than giving any kind of reasoned response, flailed his arms a lot saying one could not extrapolate from the audit sample to the entire population. But they knew, they had to know, that Dan’s Really Obvious Objection was coming. They don’t seem to have had a response for it. If they did, they should’ve put it in the public domain long ago, before CEPR made the point. If they didn’t, then they shouldn’t have published their paper at all.I repeat the juicy part:
”... the chances of the audit yielding results in line with CNE’s overall results if the real result was in line with Sumate’s exit poll comes out to 1 in 28 billion trillion”.
Jay-Jay,
I must admit that I am deeply impressed by your insatiable appetite for humiliation.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 3, 2007 at 8:51 PM Starboy,
I think you need reading lessons. 1) I found no article with the quote you site. The article I found was quite the opposite. Try reading before passing judgement. THAT would be special. 2) Try a little more reading, from reputable sources. Blogs, as you have so often pointed out in the past, do not meet that criteria. Opinions, dear friend, not facts.
I must apologize. Did I do you permanent brain damage in our last King of the Hill battle?
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 3, 2007 at 11:26 PM In case anyone was wondering Venezuela tens of thousands of international observers monitoring the election… so much for rigged
Posted by Anti-War Conservative on Jan 3, 2007 at 11:45 PM Those dissing Chavez should realize that almost anyone living in US “liberated” Iraq would give their right nut to live in Venezuela. Without any doubt he is the most popular leader in all of the America’s.
erikvilius.blogspot.com
Posted by Anti-War Conservative on Jan 3, 2007 at 11:50 PM Anyone want to bet that Venezuela’s election was a lot cleaner than a typical Chicago or Cook County one. Even Jay Cline wouldn’t want to wager on that… hehe
erikvilius.blogspot.com
Posted by Anti-War Conservative on Jan 3, 2007 at 11:58 PM 1) I found no article with the quote you site. The article I found was quite the opposite. Try reading before passing judgement.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 3, 2007 at 4:26 PM
Try clicking on the link, amigo.
Occasionally you make me laugh so hard, I’m afraid I might damage something, but my mind is still pretty much intact.
So sorry.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 4, 2007 at 12:26 AM antiwar con, you are right. jay cline is a neoconman who occasionally surfaces with weekly standard BS.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 4, 2007 at 1:13 AM awc - the issue is they observed only where and when Chavez allowed them to observe.
starboy,
no no dear friend, the Daily Fishwrap quote. Or did you just make that up? As far as the real fishwrap you have provided, some of the more important links to his argument just 404s.
Again, try reading before inserting foot.
But I must, once again, apologize. You have stated over and over you have no inkling of a desire to debate and your sole reason for dragging our debates into the mud was as a mere tactic to shut the troll up. I guess I am the naive optimist, to think that even you would have something to contribute, given half a chance. But after three strikes, I will yield to your mudraking and mudslinging.
As I have indicated on more than one occassion, when you are ready and willing to engage in an honest debate with a modicum of intellectual integrity, I am here. Chavez is a power monger. I have made my opening arguments.
Just be sure to wipe the mud off your shoes, first.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 4, 2007 at 11:48 AM yes, Jay-Jay,
Chavez is a power monger. He is purchasing the power of the oligarchs and selling it to the people at a cut rate.
HERE is a link to where you can download a pdf of the study. This is very old news. You should just give up before you humiliate yourself any more. There is no evidence of electoral fraud by the CNE because there is no electoral fraud by the CNE, regardless of what you may surmise through your Mr. Magoo eyes.
‘Honest debate’! ‘Intellectual integrity’!
Jay-Jay, you ARE droll. How are you going to debate without your army of strawmen?
Nice of you to try and be so nice, though.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 4, 2007 at 4:28 PM Pure Jay Cline nonsense. Chavez got around 63% of the vote, a little more than other leftists Lula and Correa (around 60%) won with a couple of weeks before him. The fact is Chavez had no need to cheat - and he didn’t. What Cline and other neocons don’t like is that Latin America has chosen an independent path away from US domination and globalization. To bad for him and his crowd because more is to come.
Posted by Anti-War Conservative on Jan 4, 2007 at 4:52 PM Jay,
Did you find the quote I site [sic] or not? I ask because you said you found something quite opposite, and I’m curious. What did you find?
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 4, 2007 at 4:56 PM Jay is simply intellectually dishonest, nothing more complicated than that.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 4, 2007 at 6:44 PM starboy,
I appreciate your prior persistent and profuse objections regarding your expertise with computer systems, and I accept that lack of knowledge for the sake of our argument. Alas, I do not have that same failing.
Let me dumb this up for you, once again.
Point 1.
At issue between the opposing reports (Hausmann/Rigobon vs. CEPR) is whether the audits, particularly the second one, used a statistically random sample. H/R says no, CEPR says yes. Certainly you and I can agree that is necessary before one can apply statistical analysis (including your 1 in 28 trillion statistic). True?
A computer was used with a random number generator (a program that creates a series of “random” numbers) to randomly select which boxes were to be chosen. Here is where I simplify it for you. A computer random number generator actually does not generate a true random number sequence. It uses a serial algorithm that is dependent on what number you plug into the equations. This is called a “seed”, which both reports refer to. The CEPR report makes the following assertions:
1. The program generates exactly the same sample given the same seed.
2. The program generates a different sample given a different seed.
3. The program generates a sample of voting stations (mesas) based on the universe of mesas that have voting machines.
4. The source code delivered produces the executable file delivered.
5. The input file used to generate the sample is missing only six of 8,147 voting stations (mesas). The input file has one missing voting center.
6. The program, when run enough times, includes each mesa (voting station) in the sample, and the number of times a given mesa is included in a sample is evenly distributed, indicating the sample generation program is random.These are all accurate statements. However.
Chavez refused to allow The Carter Center to use its own random number program or its own computer. It would only allow Chavez’ to be used. Chavez refused to allow any one else choose the “seed” number to create the random numbers. Now, here is where it gets tricky. If you know the seed number ahead of time, the serial numbers are not random (ie unpredictable) to you. You will know with absolute certainty what the first number will be, what the tenth number will be, what all the numbers will be (see CEPR’s point #1)
By requiring that he chose the starting point, Chavez and his people knew exactly which boxes would be sampled, even before the election.
The sample of the second audit was not random. It was known with exact certainty. But only by Chavez and his people.
If Mr. Chavez wanted to prove the elections were fair and free of fraud, why did he go out of his way and insist on controlling BOTH the program AND the starting gun? Lock the door and give the burglar the key ...
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 4, 2007 at 8:05 PM Point 2.
The 1 in 28 trillion loony tune was made with a faulty assumption. When H/R demonstrated the statistically significant deviation between signatures for the referendum and the ultimate YES votes in the election, they found a demonstrable 10% variance between precincts whose voting stations were part of the “randomly” selected second audit and those precincts that were not. H/R’s own version of a “1 in 28 trillion” improbability was a more believable 1% chance. In other words, this deviation from statistical norms would only happen 1 in 100 times.
Unless you rigged the elections.
CEPR took H/R’s “for the sake of the argument” statement, assuming that Chavez “randomly” chose what voting stations to be part of the “clean” audit, to unbelievable, and quite unscientific, extremes. Which is why they got such a loony number, a result that most scientists would go “nnhuh?” and recheck their report before running it up the flag pole.
For the sake of the argument.
H/R’s point here was to make the numbers as conservative as possible. That is called scientific honesty. CEPR misappropriated theoretical assumptions and transplanted them wholesale into the real world, making the numbers as loose as possible. I believe that is called “cooking the books”.
The 1 in 28 trillion loony tune is valid ONLY if you make the assumption that Chavez actually tossed a coin to determine which voting stations he would and would not corrupt.
And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Caracas for sale.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 4, 2007 at 8:06 PM Oh, and when you finally get around to sourcing that “fishwrapper” quote from the WSJ, let me know.
Asking me to validate your unsubstantiated arguments is, well, loony.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 4, 2007 at 8:31 PM Jay, much ado about NOTHING. At the end of the day Chavez was democratically elected with a huge margin of the type not seen here since 1964 or 1984. This talmudic how many angels dance on the head of a pin debate is ludicrous, you lost, ass. Give it up. No one cares anymore. Every country in South America has democratically elected a leftist except Colombia and they are next. If LB wants to continue rebut you that’s fine. But frankly Jay you’d give an aspirin a headache. This whole thread is turning into the most boring episode since you’re wedding night, Jay.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 4, 2007 at 8:40 PM Jack,
Think about it. You are using the same (il)logic that the CERP report is.
“Chavez won the majority of the vote because the majority of the vote is for Chavez.”
The issue is that the count is a fraud.
Much ado about nothing? Then why all the hype about Bush and the 2000 and 2004 elections which “proved” Bush was the winner because he won more votes?
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 4, 2007 at 9:45 PM Time for Cline to go back to the amen corner where he belongs… the guy’s spinning like a top
Posted by Anti-War Conservative on Jan 4, 2007 at 9:55 PM Indeed. The kind of circular logic spun by Jack will do that.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 4, 2007 at 10:31 PM “Chavez refused to allow The Carter Center to use its own random number program or its own computer.”
The problem with your assumption that the CNE used a single special initiating seed or set of seeds to predetermine the sample is that it is just not true. From the CEPR report:
The biggest technical problem with this type of fraud—aside from rigging the machines without anyone finding out12—is to make sure that the sample is chosen from the “clean” polling centers. To do this, the CNE would have to have fooled the Carter Center, OAS, and other international observers into thinking it was randomly selecting a sample to be audited from the total universe of centers, while secretly substituting a program that selected only from the “clean” voting centers13. It is worth noting that the sample was chosen in front of a live television audience, as well as the international observers from the Carter Center, the Organization of American States, and another group of European observers14.
In response to a request by the opposition group Súmate to consider the theory and evidence offered by Hausmann and Rigobón, the Carter Center examined the program that was used to generate the sample. The Center’s report (issued Friday, September 17) states:
The CNE requested a group of university professors to develop a sample generation program for the 2nd audit.The program is written in Pascal for the Delphi environment.
The program receives a 1 to 8 digit seed. The CNE delivered to the international observers the source code, the executable code, the input file, and the sample. Carter Center experts analyzed the program and concluded:
1. The program generates exactly the same sample given the same seed.
2. The program generates a different sample given a different seed.
3. The program generates a sample of voting stations (mesas) based on the universe of mesas that have voting machines.
4. The source code delivered produces the executable file delivered.
5. The input file used to generate the sample is missing only six of 8,147 voting stations (mesas). The input file has one missing voting center.
6. The program, when run enough times, includes each mesa (voting station) in the sample, and the number of times a given mesa is included in a sample is evenly distributed, indicating the sample generation program is random.The sample generation program was run 1,020 times. With no exception all of the 8,141 mesas appeared at least 14 times in a sample. Not a single mesa was excluded from the sample in the test run
The key here is that:
(1) the CNE didn’t write the program.
(2) the program was run 1,020 times with different seeds, giving a demonstrable random result.
(3) It was done in full view of the whole world.
The kicker is that results from non-electronic voting also showed that the H/R assumptions had no basis in reality.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 4, 2007 at 10:32 PM starboy,
You are right. You are completely clueless when it comes to computers.
1) They didn’t need to write the program. They just needed to know which “seed” would give them the desired results.
2) The program was indeed certified as being a random number generator. Had they been able to run the program with a seed not of Chavez’ choosing, it would have created a sufficiently random sequence.
3) How many people saw, on live TV, David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear? The sleight of hand was in CHOOSING the seed number.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 4, 2007 at 10:44 PM Ok, people. Let me try once again and simplify this even further.
CERP comes up with a loony “1 in 28 trillion” statistic based on their claim that H/R assumes the audited sample is actually representative of the actual vote. From that, they get their loony tune, showing that H/R’s results has as much chance of happening as a quantum particle translating 200 light years in zero time.
The problem is that while H/R does indeed make that assumption, they start with that assumption to reach a false conclusion, proving that the assumption itself is false.
The assumption being, of course, that the sample was random….
Here’s a little help. The CERP ref is on page 8 of their report with a footnote (19).
H/R’s initial assumption, to be proven false, is on their report page 28.
On page 33, they conclude,
Results
The interaction term D * Signatures shows that the elasticity of the signatures in votes is 10.5 percent higher in the audited precincts than in the un-audited ones, i.e., the signatures collected in the audited precincts on August 18th generate 10 percent more YES votes than the rest of the precincts. The statistical value of Student’s t is 2.73. The probability that this is by chance is less than 1 percent
We conclude that the data indicate that the audited precincts are statistically different from the unaudited precincts. This implies that they do not form a random sample of the entire universe of precincts (audited and unaudited).
Assumption proved false. The sample is not random.
Amen.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 4, 2007 at 10:47 PM I should also add these obvious observations:
(1) If the audit chose an unrepresentative number of mesas from predominately pro-Chavez precincts, it would be apparent on its face. It didn’t and it isn’t.
(2) If the audit chose only from predominately anti-Chavez mesas where no alleged ballot-stuffing had taken place, omitting precincts where alleged ballot-stuffing had taken place and in numbers representative of such precincts, which it did, then if the H/R assumptions were true, then the audit would have correlated with the H/R assumptions. It didn’t.
(3) If the audit chose from predominately anti-Chavez precincts where alleged ballot stuffing had taken place it would be obvious from historical voting patterns that ballot stuffing had taken place. It isn’t.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 4, 2007 at 11:31 PM Bush DIDN’T win more votes in 2000, Gore beat him by over half a million. Nothing that you presented in the least proves that Chavez stole the election, the vote disparity, unlike the US in 00 & 04, is way too wide, you’re pissing up a rope here and you know it. You are the last person, Jay, to talk about circular logic, you have been talking in circles of doubletalk on this thread and the good news is that nobody really gives a damn. Go back to the Amen corner at the wailing wall for poor losers and pull your pod some more.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 4, 2007 at 11:59 PM It is difficult to distinguish from the degree of ambiguity in your syntax exactly who and what you are talking about, but I believe this section of the CEPR report addresses your concerns:
The basic implication of their model, given the assumption, is that if both the exit polls and the signatures differ from the referendum vote in a similar manner then this is the result of fraud. The authors find such a correlation, and interpret this as evidence of fraud.
But their result in this section depends on a crucial assumption that is difficult to justify in this situation, given the sources of the exit poll data: that the errors in the measurement from the exit poll and those from the signatures are uncorrelated. While the signature gathering was subject to controls and international monitoring, and thus can be taken as official data, the same cannot be said about the exit poll data. The exit poll data provided by Súmate was reported by Penn, Schoen, Berland & Associates, and showed the opposition to have won the referendum by 59 percent (Yes) to 41 percent (No). The other exit poll data used in this analysis was provided by the opposition group Primero Justicia, and showed the opposition winning with 62 percent of the vote. These data are not just measured with error but highly implausible. We have no idea how they were gathered or if there was fraud involved in their collection. As such, it is entirely possible that the error term for the exit polls would be correlated with the error term for the signatures. If this is the case, the empirical estimates of the Hausmann and Rigobon model in this section would say nothing about fraud in the election; rather they would simply be a product of how the exit poll data was collected.
Indeed it is highly unusual to be asked to question the results of an election in which so many controls and monitoring procedures were in place, on the basis of implausible exit poll data that was provided (and gathered) by political activists with no verifiable controls or monitoring. Although Hausmann and Rigobon’s analysis does not require this data to be accurate, it does require that its errors be uncorrelated with those of the signatures, something that cannot be assumed without any verifiable knowledge or observation of where the data came from. It is also unusual that the authors used only this opposition data, and ignored other exit poll data that more closely predicted the official results of the election. For example, exit polling by the American polling firm Evans/ McDonough Company, Inc. polled 53,045 voters and found a result of 55% NO to 45% YES
In other words, garbage in/garbage out.
What we are talking about is an 18% discrepancy. Not something one can easily disguise.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 12:21 AM lb,
You (and CERP) are absolutely correct; using dubious exit polling data is dubious at best. Unfortunately, you (and CERP, twice now) are arriving at false conclusions on the basis of false assumptions.
H/R did not use the exit polls as the second data point in discovering the unexplained variance.
The 10% variance between audited and unaudited precincts was the variance of the ratio of the signatures to the actual vote.
First, please read the first Results paragraph I provided above (page 33 of H/R’s report), specifically, the signatures collected in the audited precincts on August 18th generate 10 percent more YES votes than the rest of the precincts..
And this statement from page 29 of H/R’s report, as they explain their methodology,
To implement this strategy we again made use of our model that correlates signatures, voter participation rates and new voters with the number of actual votes cast.
“Correlates signatures with number of actual votes cast”
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 12:25 PM What we are talking about is a 10% discrepancy. Not something one can easily dismiss.
As far as being disguised, H/R has quite effectively blown the cover off that deception.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 12:29 PM fyi, when you run the numbers, assuming H/R’s variance is valid and apply that to the unaudited precincts, you get a dead heat.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 12:48 PM With regards to the “obvious” observations,
1) It IS apparent. Reread H/R’s report. Understanding the significance of the 10.5% variance between audited and unaudited precincts requires only a modicum of statistical ability.
2&3) It did and it has. That’s the point. See number 1.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 2:56 PM Several hundred years ago, the following was “obvious”:
- the world is flat
- the world is the center of the universe
- god created the universe
- disturbed people were possessed by demons
- bloodletting the sick released bad blood from the systemShow me the science, the rigorous logic, that validates your “obvious” observations.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 3:08 PM Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 5:25 AM
The very first words in HR’s text:
This study was requested by Sumate who also provided the databases we used.
Sumate is the group that carried out the spurious exit polling.
From the abstract:
We find that the
deviation pattern between precincts, based on the relationship between the signatures
from the November 2003 Reafirmazo, and the YES votes on August 15, is positive and
significantly correlated with the deviation pattern in the relationship between exit polls
and votes. In other words, those precincts in which, according to the number of
signatures, there are an unusually low number of YES votes, is also where, according to
the exit polls, the same thing occurs.As I said, garbage in/garbage out. It doesn’t make much difference what measurements you make if you have a crooked ruler.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 4:46 PM Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 8:08 AM
Here comes the army of strawmen. I knew you couldn’t resist, Jay-Jay. You are so predictable.
If my observations are so unscientific and so lacking in logic, then it shouldn’t be too hard to show them to be false.
Go for it.
Here’s a hint:
The logical form of all three is modus ponens.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 5:00 PM As far as the 10.5% so-called discrepancy, this is the result of averaging the net from the Sumate poll and the Primera Justicia poll against the audit results with a lot of unnecessarily complicated hocus-pocus and mis-direction thrown into the calculations.
The thing one needs to keep in mind is that whenever H/R say ‘unaudited precincts’ they are refering to the database provided by these exit polls.
“There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies and statistics”
Mark Twain
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 5:39 PM Again, much ado about nothing, not only did Chavez survive the US coup attempt but he won another overwhelming victory and democratic leftists are now running every South American country except Colombia and that will be next as the corrupt rightist government is on the way out.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 5, 2007 at 5:55 PM Dude,
Read the report.
Yes, they were provided a lot of data, which they looked at. The fact that they get the same result whether they compared it with exit polls or actual votes actually validates the exit polls.
But,
With regard to modus ponens, so the Earth is flat? C’mon. Saying that it should be easy to disprove, doesn’t prove your case. Or that it is even relevant.
Isn’t that obvious?
People are only half as dumb as you think they are, and you are only half as smart as you should be.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 7:10 PM starboy,
In case you missed it, from your own quote,
We find that the deviation pattern between precincts, based on the relationship between the signatures from the November 2003 Reafirmazo, and the YES votes on August 15, is positive and significantly correlated with the deviation pattern in the relationship between exit polls and votes. In other words, those precincts in which, according to the number of signatures, there are an unusually low number of YES votes, is also where, according to the exit polls, the same thing occurs.
Let’s break that down, shall we?
1) We find that the deviation pattern between precincts, based on the relationship between the signatures from the November 2003 Reafirmazo, and the YES votes on August 15, is positive…
In other words, the comparison was made between the signatures and the actual vote.
2) and significantly correlated with the deviation pattern in the relationship between exit polls and votes.
In other words, they then compared the deviation between the exit polls and the votes, then compared the two deviations and found them to be the same.
3) In other words, those precincts in which, according to the number of signatures, there are an unusually low number of YES votes, is also where, according to the exit polls, the same thing occurs.
In other words, read the report.
Then engage brain.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 7:18 PM As far as the 10.5% deviation, this was a result of the actual audit and the actual vote.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 7:22 PM Jack,
Try reading what is actually said before jumping on the broken bandwagon…..
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 7:25 PM As far as relying strictly on data from Sumate, if so, and if, by implication the data is faulty, how did you say it, then it shouldn’t be too hard to show them to be false.
I wonder why no one has been able to do that?
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 8:01 PM I see we are headed down that predictable road where, when you are unable to refute the facts, you start to apply your own misdirection and play King of the Hill.
The Hill is yours, starboy, as it always will be.
When you are ready to argue facts, when you are ready to acknowledge facts, I’ll be here.
(yes, yes, I know. But if you have refuted any of the facts as I presented them, please illuminate this poor troll - I don’t see it)
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 8:05 PM You know, I may be a little too harsh on ol’ Chavez. Bored of starboy’s disinformation campaign, I started looking for other examples of Chavez’ attempts to thwart the democratic process in Venezuela.
Imagine my surprise when I found him, as the Executive Head, to be taking responsible actions in defending Venezuela’s democratic institutions. The Referendum, of which we are discussing, was initiated by a campaign by those scurrilous louts, the Sumate, to gather signatures calling for a Recall of Chavez as El Presidente. Those scoundrels gathered over 3.2 million signatures calling for a recall. Chavez, in defense of his country, promptly had the CNE reject the signatures as they had been collected too early in Chavez’ term.
Three months later that same rag tag group collected 3.6 million signatures. What was Chavez to do? Per the Constitution, the time-limit was now satisfied. Instead, Chavez invalidated nearly half of them as being signed under duress. Thankfully, that left only 1.9 million. The Constitution required 2.4 million.
But those bass turds did not relent. They bribed the Venezuelan Supreme Court to reinstate just enough signatures to meet the minimum requirement, with enough left over for change.
Many of those signers who had the misfortune to be employed by the government subsequently found themselves out of a job. And rightly so! Can you imagine a functioning democracy that allows its employees to speak out against their employer?
Viva Chavez!
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 9:33 PM And all you can do, little Jay, is pull your pod in rustration…..........................
Better tell the CIA to do a better job in their next coup attempt.
And give my most insincere good wishes to the Caracas upper classes….....poor babies !
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 5, 2007 at 9:40 PM As far as relying strictly on data from Sumate, if so, and if, by implication the data is faulty, how did you say it, then it shouldn’t be too hard to show them to be false.
I wonder why no one has been able to do that?
United States Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 1:01 PMIt seems they were polling exclusively in upscale anti-Chazista nieghborhoods.
What isn’t mentioned in this article, since the author wasn’t aware of this, though his report is first-hand evidence, is that the Sumate poll-workers were violating all the methodological protocols with which they had presumably been trained.
They also flagrantly defied Venezuelan Law by releasing their bogus poll before the polls closed.
It seems the company that lent them their ‘good’ reputation has a history of such monkeyshines.
You can cling to some notion that these clowns are credible, but be assured, it is nothing but wishful thinking.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 9:49 PM Indeed, these guys are shysters!
Let’s take a look at other notable hook and crook polling campaigns they have run,
Clinton (Billy) 1996, Cllnton (Hilly) 2001.
Starboy, when you are right, you are right!
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 10:07 PM (I believe it is your serve, in this mudslinging match)
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 10:10 PM Yeah Jay-jay,
I really enjoyed the Michael Barone article, too. That fool couldn’t find his ass with both hands and an experienced guide.
Is that what you’re looking for? You’re welcome.
Avoidance doesn’t obviate the very real problems with Sumate’s polling methods. There is no need to sling mud, they’ve covered themselves in it quite on their own.
Still waiting for some logical refutation of my three observations.
You wanted honest, rational debate, right?
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 10:24 PM Many of those signers who had the misfortune to be employed by the government subsequently found themselves out of a job. And rightly so! Can you imagine a functioning democracy that allows its employees to speak out against their employer?
Viva Chavez!
United States Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 2:33 PM‘Many’ is usually construed to be more than the number of fingers on one hand. I believe the class action suit of those who claim to have allegedly lost jobs because of the printing of the petition signers names numbers exactly three (3) claimants.
Exactly!
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 10:41 PM With regards to the “obvious” observations,
1) It IS apparent. Reread H/R’s report. Understanding the significance of the 10.5% variance between audited and unaudited precincts requires only a modicum of statistical ability.
2&3) It did and it has. That’s the point. See number 1.
United States Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 7:56 AM
Like I keep saying: First, read. Then, engage brain.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 10:46 PM ‘Many’ is usually construed to be more than the number of fingers on one hand. I believe the class action suit of those who allegedly claim to have lost jobs because of the printing of the petition signers names numbers exactly three (3) claimants.
Exactly!
Your statistical slip is showing again. I wasn’t aware of a class action suit. I was referring to the total population of those fired, not some unrepresentative microsample.
Exactly, indeed!
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 10:49 PM Yes, I do want an honest, rational debate.
You can start with any of the three. Your choice.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 10:51 PM (yes, yes, I know. But if you have refuted any of the facts as I presented them, please illuminate this poor troll - I don’t see it)
United States Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 1:05 PMWhat facts? You state groundless opinion and cite accusations of fraud that have been widely and rigorously shown not to credible.
What more refutation do you need? Can you show me any reason why the oh-so-many-ways flawed Sumate polls should be given more credence than the five (5) other independent polling organizations that confirmed the election results?
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 11:01 PM As you have noted, if it is so easy to disprove, why isn’t anyone doing it? CERP tried mightily, but were so eager beaver about it they made at least two very basic faulty assumptions. It’s been two and a half years….
Is the source data corrupted? Should be easy enough to prove…aside from your infamous illogical innuendoes….
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 11:07 PM You can start with any of the three. Your choice.
United States Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 3:51 PM(1) If the audit chose an unrepresentative number of mesas from predominately pro-Chavez precincts, it would be apparent on its face. It didn’t and it isn’t.
Refute it.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 11:09 PM Is the source data corrupted? Should be easy enough to prove…aside from your infamous illogical innuendoes….
United States Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 4:07 PMWhat innuendos? Sumate’s malfeasance has been widely and openly revealed with loads of empirical evidence. Sumate themselves have backed away from their own accusation. I daresay Hausmann and Rigobon themselves have retreated on the issue. At least in my reading, they haven’t put up any defence against the CPER report. Any! Chirping cricket time.
You are betting on the wrong horse, my friend.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 11:21 PM Your statistical slip is showing again. I wasn’t aware of a class action suit. I was referring to the total population of those fired, not some unrepresentative microsample.
Exactly, indeed!
United States Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 3:49 PMThis is the total number of government employees that have actually claimed discrimination. If you have some credible evidence of some conjectural total population that was fired for discrimination, yet have, curiously, made no claim of it, it would be interesting to see.
But, then again, I know it is a dismal hope that you will ever say anything that is remotely apt or interesting, don’t I, Herr Doktor Professor Klinebottle?
Just looping and twisting the same old circular reasoning.
Ahh. I had such high hopes for you, my lad. It pains me to see you spoil your gifts.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 5, 2007 at 11:45 PM 1) again, read the report. 10.5% which would only happen 1 out 100 times.
2) This is the total number of government employees that have actually claimed discrimination. - already answered that. You continue to qualify the population group.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 6, 2007 at 1:20 AM Before we continue, you need to tighten up your “arguments”. I am getting bored of cleaning up your obvious lapses in logic, rhetoric and fact. I’ll try to give you the benefit of a doubt and not imply these “lapses” are deliberate rhetorical tactics. But we both know better.
Now, we’ve “known” each other for a little while, so, anticipating your typical passive-aggressive response to such criticism, let me show you what I mean through example.
Your “refuted” arguments have been repeatedly based on obvious false assumptions. Your latest “refutation” of my defense of the integrity and relevance of Sumate’s exit polls flies ignores that I have not defended those exit polls (even calling them dubious myself) nor have I ever maintained that they are important or critical to H/R’s analysis. I have repeatedly said that the results of H/R’s statistical analysis are based strictly on publicly available data, namely the signature data and the actual vote and official audit.
None of which you will ever acknowledge, of course. I am just letting you know what the conditions are to continue a truly honest, rational debate.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 6, 2007 at 1:21 AM Jay, you lost big time ! Got your ass whipped in public again.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 6, 2007 at 1:33 AM I have repeatedly said that the results of H/R’s statistical analysis are based strictly on publicly available data, namely the signature data and the actual vote and official audit.
United States Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 5, 2007 at 6:21 PM
You can say that ‘till the cows come home, but it won’t make it true.
H/R admit out front their data for the election results, i.e., ‘the actual vote’ are from the Sumate exit polls. The signature data is from Sumate, too. The only other data for the election results are the tabulated results from the election or the other exit polls and all the pre-election polls that all indicate a fair election and do so even when put through H/R’s cherry-picked regression. It is only with the Sumate exit poll data that any variance between the Si! votes and the referendum signatures can be demonstrated. Other than that, nada.
Rigobon himself has thrown in the towel, but here you are, waving it like a bloody flag so shot full of holes you couldn’t use it to wipe a gnat’s ass.
C’mon already. You know you’re sitting dead in the water. It’s time to move on.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 6, 2007 at 2:27 AM Just wanted to express kudos to some of the posters on the pro Chavez side of this discussion. Comparisons with Castro Are meaningless; he didn’t have any oil. Yet despite being cut off from Soviet aid in the ‘90’s and being boycotted and plotted against by the world’s most powerful nation, go to the World Health Organization website and look at all the numbers. Cubans have the same life expectancy as in U.S., and by all measurable health standards live better and have higher levels of education than 95% of all Latin Americans. Chavez and his oil money will enable populist governments to take control throughout the south. In ones such as Mexico, where the oligarchies are still in control, they are on the ropes and will surely not survive the next election.
I have a feeling I shall run into Jay again on these forums, and one question I would ask of some other progressive users here is this: Is he a troll or mole? Or put anoter way, an Adam Smith fundamentalist seeking to convert the heathens or a paid spin doctor? Just curious, and no offence intended Jay. I only inquire as you are quite adept with the spin, and I assume some of your points are valid. But I have to wonder at such intense interest and time spent posting here by a tech savvy, erudite soul such as you.
Even were I to assume your conjectures were correct, I would respond I have spent time in Venezuela, and understand that even most of the poor who support Chavez don’t bother to vote, just as in this country. His popularity with the vast majority of Venezuelans is far greater than the recent election would indicate, as the CIA learned in the coup attempt against him. Anyway, sorry to interrupt you soliloquy
RP
Posted by recursive prophet on Jan 7, 2007 at 3:26 AM RP,
Glad to make you’re acquaintance. I dig your handle.
Jay Cline is most likely a vigilante troll rather than a government shill.
He is very much enamoured with his vastly superior knowledge, logic and reason, quite beyond his apparently adequate training in IT.
In other words, quite a crackpot.
In that, he is not much different than any other conservative troll, I guess. Although realistically, he is probably more of a libertarian. He self identifies as a progressive, though. I assume as in ‘progressive vascular degeneration’ or something like. He doesn’t like to be pinned down.
He apparently doesn’t have anything more interesting going on in his life, so he fills the empty hours fantasizing that he is delivering stinging rebuttals to the writers and readers of ITT.
In other words, quite full of shit.
So, yes, more than likely, you’ll see him around these threads again.
P.S. He hates my guts. Which is so much fun for me ;-}
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 7, 2007 at 4:51 AM Been away for a little while….see , that the Jay Cline is trolling after the Chavez effect…..It’s really very simple….not much of a debate needed , actually…Look JayJay….I’m going to name drop….maybe BM / HJ will stink in…oh….excuse the typo ...I meant slip in on this point of view….
Basically….and this is very obvious , but for some reason people sometimes don’t get the point until a leading scholar makes the observation…..Chomsky has stated this perspective repeatedly , ad infinitum in interviews and in print material…...
...........Once a nation is involved in covert or overt operations to destabilize another nation….ALL judgemental moralizations about the effected nation , especially when concocted by individuals that are either sympathetic and or underinformed about aforementioned covert / overt operations against said nation…these observations are generally seen or should be considered as MOOT in perspective and content…...Yu see Jay….it can be very hypocritical of US citizens too ” wave their filthy dysfunctional so-called democracy , in the face of citizens of another nations….who are involved in the real building of a true democracy.”...whether socialist or not…......
These inaccurate generalities give the perception of an egregiously classist individual….that is in no way , truely in solidarity with any agenda that has been developed to better life for all citizens concerned…
It’s an extremely simple and straight forward approach to what can be confusing or convoluted agendas…..
Try it Jay.
Posted by Redhorse on Jan 7, 2007 at 2:02 PM RP…..One would have to guess that your online ID…points to possible acute mathematical prognostic capablities….......true.
Posted by Redhorse on Jan 7, 2007 at 2:30 PM Testing prophesy: if leading scholar, then prophesy valid, else continue testing prophesy.
Posted by barkless1 on Jan 8, 2007 at 2:45 AM Hola, essays! Great bi-lingual homonym for the many here interested in el sur and love writing. I’ve had time since yesterday to truly peruse this long thread and others, and see per usual I missed a lot. Premature articulation strikes again.
Hard to know where to start, so guess I’ll go with easy stuff. LB, I’m now far more curious about what your story is than JC, who like his initial namesake apparently has the capability of rising from the dead via an unholy trinity such as mentioned by RH-great reply by the way. And while I do view the world through a quantitative filter, RH, and have presented an apophenicly recursive prognosis of the future based on Riemann’s Zeta Function online, my actual capabilities are quite limited and dwindling. Part of my problem was failure-as a student of philosophy-to miss the significance of numbers. If only I had read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” sooner. What IS quality?
Personally I think trolls from the Evil Republic should be welcome here. I enjoyed immensely the LB/JC exchanges, and feel they serve a good purpose. Lets’ not forget the Law of Inverted Intentions. It is a good way for readers coming to this site to be exposed to the flawed logic of those who would defend indefensible policies in the international pillage sold as diplomacy here at home, and witness its deconstruction and disambiguation by the many liberal cognoscenti who post here.
I have employed ‘sock-puppets,’ myself in cyberspace, though thought of them more as ‘clones.’ I suspect at least one user here is fairly proficient at it, and find it fun to observe. Banning is not only futile regarding individual sites and users, but on a larger scale it is a major threat to all who believe in free speech. If you feel certain as I do that ‘we’-Chomskyites?-are the ones truly in the right as opposed to on it, any attempt to eliminate viewpoints not posing a direct threat to others should be resisted. ‘They’ already control the media. I recall a BBC reporter declaring in regard to Chavez: “Half the people love him, half hate him” just a few weeks ago. And how often has Chomsky been on PBS? So complete is their control they even have most our citizens believing the billionaires that run this enterprise like Rupert Murdoch actually are promoting a left wing bias. Bet any former writers for Pravda still around marvel at how they pulled that one off. If they can control the net-and remember RM now owns Myspace-then all hope is lost.
Likely I won’t be posting much here, as I see it as not only singing to the choir but doing so to one that features far more resonating voices then my own. But I shall keep reading these threads, and occasionally add an ‘amen’ or two. I find LB delightful to behold for sure, and quite a few others are really impressive thinkers. Most of my efforts have been directed toward reaching the intelligent Christians-an endangered but not yet extinct group-who like their brethren in Islam have allowed fundamentalist radicals to hijack their faith. At first I attempted this in a straightforward manner, sending articles I’d written to various sites where the religious right gathered. After many tries I gave up on this strategy, and now use a more subtle approach-under many guises-where believers congregate for entertainment instead of prayer.
RP
Posted by recursive prophet on Jan 8, 2007 at 3:57 AM Aha! I see my attempt to post earlier-even after I shortened it-somehow just didn’t go through so I’m adding a few comments to the last paragraph of that reply, which was in original post before I learned of character limitations. While waiting to see if it just took time to for my comments to process, I Googled our Luminous one. Very impressive, and I think it’s safe to assume that’s not our LB that goes by this same name on Myspace. (hehe) Surprised one of the trolls hasn’t posted a link here.
LB, if you have a blog somewhere I didn’t find it, and would appreciate a link. You mentioned on the Panda site you had studied the behavior of trolls and I would love to read some of your conclusions. Also, is someone could tell me how to view the profiles of others here I’d be grateful. Seems there must be a way or what’s the sense in having them?
The parting suggestion I would make is continue the dialectic with those trolls capable of doing so without resorting to primarily ad homenum attacks, and try spreading the good word beyond those who are willing to read complicated explanations. Reading is a dying art, and we need to come to terms with it. I have used this argument in defending the UN speech Chavez gave last year. He got the worlds attention, spiked sales of “The Manufacture of Consent,” and spoke to the poor of the south within a venue they could clearly comprehend. Hugo will likely make other embarrassing remarks in connecting with his primary constituency, but I think he truly does have the potential to fulfill his quest to be a modern day Bolivar. Del lobo un pelo es bastante. -Arpie
Posted by recursive prophet on Jan 8, 2007 at 4:22 AM The statistical analysis by H/R is sound. The methodology is clearly described, and easily repeatable by anyone doing second year undergrad work in statistics. The data used is official, public data; it is not owned nor controlled by Sumate. Sumate’s exit poll data is not what has led to the conclusion that there is less than a 1% statistical chance that the referendum was fair. It was actual referendum data, actual voting results, actual audit results.
The rhetorical non-tactic of assassinating Sumate’s character to “prove” the data is false, is typically disingenuous. While I would not offer testimony as a character witness for Sumate, neither would I for Chavez. The issue is the data, not character.
Again, in starboy’s own luminescent words,
If my observations are so unscientific and so lacking in logic, then it shouldn’t be too hard to show them to be false.
It has, after all, been over two years. Had Venezuela actually been a democracy under Chavez, then something as simple as a Grand Jury Inquiry would have provided a rigorous theater to prove or disprove the data underlying H/R’s analysis, or its implications.
Too bad anyone with the balls to take on Chavez has either been silenced or neutered.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 8, 2007 at 2:54 PM RP,
No offense taken. As far as my motivations for engaging in political debate, you offer some interesting suppositions, yet I would only counter that I am here to seek truth and put in my own two cents.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 8, 2007 at 3:13 PM Omigod!
Chavez has taken over the world! His jack-booted thugs have infiltrated the whole of the press and Academia and the State Department . Even the freakin’ Wall Street Journal! The Venezuelan political opposition is now just Chavez’ sockpuppet.
Call a Grand Jury! Quick.
Gee, Jay-Jay. It seems so obvious, given your superior genius and all.
What are kaunas? Oh, I see you changed it to balls. Love that edit button.
See, this is where the fun starts, Jay-Jay. After you have been proven to be full of crap, you compound it by spewing more crap.
It makes debating you such a dee-light.
Have you considered that maybe you are my sockpuppet, too?
It would seem so obvious.
The problem with H/R’s regression is not the data they ran through the regression, it is the unsupportable assumptions about the data they used to determine the constant value in their formulation of that regression. In particular the variable that purported to describe voter intent, which was dependent on the Sumate exit polls being uncorrelated to recall signatures. As has been widely reported in the press, the Sumate poll workers were very apparently interested in maximizing Si voters in their polls, which would tend to correlate their polling results by giving a higher number of Si votes compared to recall signatures than the actual results showed.
This is what created the artifact of 10.5% variance.
H/R go to great lengths to try and distance themselves from this possibility, but when you strip away the BS, that is the distortion that falls out of their equations.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jan 8, 2007 at 5:51 PM Redhorse, I disagree with Jay here but I’m having trouble making sense
of your message above. Can you translate it from ebonics into english ?
Might even agree with your seemingly perpetually convoluted points if I
could understand them.
The definition of a “troll” is someone on a website that you disagree
with. Let’s stop this utter bullshit of trying to discredit the message by
defaming the messenger. I think that Chavez probably won because there
is a left tide in South America in reaction to Bush’s Imperium. But people
can honestly disagree. The debate here would give an aspirin a headache.
It’s difficult to follow and at the end of the day Who Gives A Damn ?
It looks like LB won here but the victory is pyrrhic.
Jay, what is a “nontactic” ? A new anti-concept ?
RP, what’s wrong with brevity ? A sure sign of a poor writer is lengthy
verbiage. You are far from the worst here but you are a windbag too.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 8, 2007 at 8:26 PM OK-this is second time my post didn’t go through. My main question was whether Jay is same guy who heads MPC? If so, kudos on articles in computer world on privacy. Have you ever read Edmundo Paz Soldan’s Turing’s Dilemma? It’s in English now if you don’t grok Spanish. He is a IT guy who grew up in Bolivia. Our history in this hemisphere speaks for itself, but it’s instructive to see it from the perspective of those who emerged from under our heel. Afraid it’s payback time now, and my better side cheers them on. Face it Jay, the left IS where the heart is. I guess by Churchill’s generational logic I am a fool. Quite possible.
My current fears are kind of Jeffersonian. I worry that as in the Middle East, our past exploitation of our “little brown brothers” in the south has perhaps engendered a hatred that will be visited on our future and prevent the kind of trust required for constructive interaction. We certainly didn’t invent using power to create ‘colonies’ to enhance our wealth, and in fact we began as one. Yet can you really believe this historical paradigm can work in an age of satellite TV?
Even those in the poorest of the world’s villages they have seen the disparity between their lives and our own now. As I write people are crossing the 18 miles between the shores of northern Morocco and Spain in tire tubes, and longer dry stretches on our deserts, to reach this ‘first’ world. (I always thought that term sounded like something from Asimov) Think any barrier can stop this flow? Perhaps it’s an inverted form of social entropy? Areas of low concentration of wealth moving toward areas of high concentration? If the money-just a unit of energy-doesn’t begin to flow into these drought countries, will not their populace continue to follow the flow upstream? Please keep posting here, but try reading LB’s queries more carefully, and respond to the points made in a more direct, impersonal way. Why let yourself be baited? And how about including links to any articles/studies you mention? I’ll end this tome with one you might have missed, below.
Arpie
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1315
Posted by recursive prophet on Jan 8, 2007 at 8:46 PM starboy,
Sorry, I just don’t see it. Can you tell me what page of the H/R report you are looking at that relates Si (which is a variable based on the signature data, not the exit polls - where Si are the number of signatures, page 30) to the exit poll data?
Ok, let’s see, first it was the WSJ calling H/R’s analysis a fraud, which you have still not been able to document.
Then it was the CERP coming up with a 1 in 28 trillion statistical absurdity in H/R’s analysis that is only valid if they assumed the audit sample was random, which H/R themselves proved false.
Then there was the accusation that the analysis itself is a fraud because it compared exit polls with vote, but actually that was wrong as well.
Now the analysis is faulty because of a deliberate fudge in the equations, that has been widely reported in the press, yet again without substantiation.
Am I missing something?
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 8, 2007 at 9:09 PM starboy,
In an attempt to be fair, let us assume that you simply do not understand statistics, even basic statistics. The key is understanding what a statistical correlation is - comparing two independent variables (ie signatures and exit polls) with a third variable (actual vote) and see if there is a correlation between the distribution of each independent variable with the third variable (yes, I know. I already explained this. But it doesn’‘t seem to have set in). The second term you need to come to terms with is what a regression analysis is. Basically, it is the analysis to determine that correlation.
With regard to the apparent fraud in Venezuela’s 2004 referendum, H/R says it better than I could, (page 4-5)
In addition, we develop a statistical technique to identify whether there are signs of fraud in the data. To do so, we depart from previous work on the subject that was based on finding patterns in the number of votes per machine or precinct. Instead, we look for two independent variables that are imperfect correlates of the intention of voters. Fraud is nothing other than a deviation between the voters’ intention and the actual count. Since each variable used is correlated with the intention, but not with the fraud we can develop a test as to whether fraud is present. In other words, each of our two independent measures of the intention to vote predicts the actual number of votes imperfectly. If there is no fraud, the errors these two measures generate would not be correlated, as they each would make mistakes for different reasons. However, if there is fraud, the variables would make larger mistakes where the fraud was bigger and hence the errors would be positively correlated. The paper shows these errors to be highly correlated and the probability that this is pure chance is again less than 1 percent.
The first variable we use is the number of registered voters in each precinct that signed the recall petition in November, 2003. This clearly shows intent to vote yes in a future election but it does so imperfectly. Our second measure is the exit poll conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland and complemented with an independent exit poll conducted by Primero Justicia. This is also an imperfect measure as it depends on potential biases in the sample, differences in the skill of the interviewer, etc. But this source of error should not be correlated at the precinct level with the one that affects the signatures. Therefore, it is very telling that in the precincts where the Penn, Schoen and Berland exit poll makes bigger mistakes is also where the number of petitioners suggests that the Yes votes would be higher.
Again, read first.
Engage brain.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 8, 2007 at 10:22 PM And, as I also said when first explaining this, not only does the analysis show, through the comparision of signature data with actual vote data, that fraud is 99% possible, but that when the exit data is then also compared with the actual vote, it shows with blindingly clarity that is obvious to all, that the “dubious” exit data, in fact, is not so dubious.
Someone cheated. The data indicates it was not Sumate.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 8, 2007 at 10:26 PM prepHJerk…...Again with the superficial bullshit….If my post is hard to understand….ask your sockpuppet….blindmikey( the babbling monkey )....or maybe Hardesty can help….Both seem to be quite willing to engage in that particular style of mimicry…...............’ toon..
Posted by Redhorse on Jan 8, 2007 at 10:54 PM Just on the AP wire, Chavez is nationalizing telecoms and power, he also is pushing for a law giving him power to do this without legislative approval in the future. Looks like Blondie was right, a classic Commie takeover. As LB says if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and smells like a duck, it’s a duck. Chavez also revoked the TV license of an opposition media, classic dictator moves. The head of the OAS properly denounced him and then Chavez abuses him in vulgar terms. Time for El Terminado here. Remember wherever an Allende pops up a Pinochet is close behind. The Washington Post, our greatest liberal paper, has called Chavez a populist fraud and said that his ruinous spending is bankrupting the Venezuelan economy. A great liberal historian once wrote that Huey Long’s knowledge of economics resembled that of “a plantation darky.” Herr Chvez seems to be in this mold. Death therapy may be in order now.
Redhorse, damn if I can understand you here…...you defending Jay ? Ever hear of lies and statistics ? This thread is putting most people to sleep. I do understand stats but at this point
who cares ? So are you sniffing Prep H again ? Whoooooooaaaaaaaaaa there ! Save some for
Shitcago cabbie, his hinepos hurts like a mudda driving that old rattletrap cab around all day
and do you know that he regularly passes up your people ? Shwarzes is the phrase his folks use.
Anyway, Chavez himself has made the debate here moot with his open Commie takeover attempt.
Kissinger was right, stupidasses do not have a right to vote themselves into communism.
Regulation is good, nationalization is off the agenda according to The New Republic, our premier
liberal organ.
Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 8, 2007 at 10:58 PM Arpie,
In looking over the Venezuelan media website you have offered, I am struck by how pro-Chavez it is. Now, don’t misunderstand me. There is nothing wrong with that, and does not necessarily condemn it to irrelevance. A true Churchillian democrat believes all should have a voice. And pro-Chavez Venezuelans are certainly entitled to their own.
However, one of the most pervasive arguments made against anti-Chavez rhetoric, is that the Venezuelan media is completely controlled by the opposition.
It would appear, that dominance may not be as pervasive as is alleged, but I do not have your in-country intimacy. As you seem to be taking a position of ITT Resident Expert on Venezuela, I would enjoy reading your response.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 8, 2007 at 11:02 PM -
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Also by Steve Ellner
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