Venezuela sucks, but Freepers love it for strawman purposes.

Venezuela under Chavez was no picnic, but it's been a mess now that Chavez is dead and the cult of personality no longer props it up. The new leader has nationalized a bunch of companies. Nothing new, really.

Freepers, always willing to distort world events to further their domestic policies, are having a field day. Lots of Ayn Rand love. Lots of "Liberals love Venezuela." Lots of switching between strongman communists who call it socialism, and liberal policies, which Freepers call socialism.

Publius remembers all the Latin American strawmen in Ayn Rand's book:

Right out of Atlas Shrugged.

Publius also seems to think Rand discovered nationalizing industries:

Directive 10-289 ping. Almost verbatim from the book.

IronJack also sings her praises:

I knew Ayn Rand was a polemicist of the first order. I did NOT know she had a touch of the clairvoyant in her as well.

Publius believes all bad economic things were predicted, since our economy is regulated:

Throughout the book, she showed that she had a crystal ball. She even predicted the 2008 housing bust due to the government inserting itself into the mortgage process.

IronJack goes on to revel in simplistic ideology:

The government should not supply ANY of its population's needs, except the very limited few enumerated in the Constitution. Government can only expand by robbing citizens of their liberty and their property -- the very condition our forefathers waged a revolution against.

Anyone who asks "Why doesn't the government do something?" is a traitor to our nation's vision. It is not the government's responsibility to do ANYTHING, except provide for the common defense and regulate international commerce. All other functions -- save those explicitly laid out in our founding charters -- are usurped from The People, and only at a cost of our cherished freedom.

Every society cares for it's weaker and infirm, but America's founders knew different! They put the General Welfare Clause in to trick the unfaithful.

ProtectOurFreedom recalls all those times Sanders talked of nationalizing our industries:

...and NOT ONE Bernie supporter can connect the dots of his campaign to Venezuela.

ProtectOurFreedom next takes down a strawman but good!

...and don’t forget most of them HATE business and corporations — they want to stick it to them. Narrow-minded stupidity...just who do they think builds the stuff they buy in the stores?

Rusty0604's poor grandson:

I have to re-educate my grandson about what capitalism is, in the simplest terms. I hope some of it sticks.

GOYAKLA cites economic genius Margaret Thatcher:

Personal letter to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro:

Dear President Nicolas,
You Ninny, I told everyone and you didn’t listen!
Lady Margaret Thatcher
The Iron Lady
cc; Mr. Bernard Sanders

PGalt's hatred has gotten weird...

ESAD socialists.

No, really. They should all be made to ESAD.

davetex ignores a long history of dictatorship doing just fine, and gets ready to heap contempt on the population:

That should be the tipping point. The people have nothing left to lose now.

Of all Cuba's failures, Hot Tabasco points to industry?

Castro did the same thing. Only problem was, there was no one left who actually knew how to run the factories...........

sparklite2 tells a story that I'm pretty sure didn't happen:

There was a machine shop in Ontario, Canada, that fought off the machinist union as long as they could until the union finally got the votes to unionize the small company. At the point, the owners made good a promise and shut down the company. The provincial government forced the company back into business. I don’t know what finally happened.

VanShuyten smugly points out that Hugo Chavez was corrupt, and yet Obama did nothing!

Check out Chavez’ daughter’s net worth. And all his buddies, too.

Do you think Obama will seize their US accounts and use the money to buy food and toilet paper for the Venezuelans? Of course not.

rlmorel belabors this paralel, with big type and colors, but it comes down to the usual 'bad things other people like are all like heroin.'

Can anyone explain to me how Heroin is any different from Socialism? (including, of course, the heroin-like high that some people will get from a boot stamping on a human face - forever.)

Publius seems to think things in former Communist countries are much worse than they are:

Maybe this is where socialism devolves into communism. Interesting.

Or it devolves into cannibalism.

Diana in Wisconsin is always ready to strawman!

And you can BET that every hard-core Leftist in our country who sees this is licking their chops at the mere THOUGHT of doing something like this in, say, Detroit or any of their Socialist enclaves!

A dream come true! *SPIT*

mythenjoseph knows educated white people are never socialist:

How did such an occurrence occur in a predominantly educated WHITE nation?................oop’s theys not be (whites in the former soviet union were not edumacated)...in my humble American opinion.

mythenjoseph then works a bit too hard at pretending not to care how racist he sounds:

Does my post make racist....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahaha

Reaching a bit, Fungi is pretty sure Latin American strongmen are just like God in the Old Testament.:

look at the history of the Jewish people as presented from Genesis through Deuteronomy and beyond. They had the guidance of the LORD in front of them, guiding them, yet they still refused to obey the commandments and sinned—deviated—from the path they were asked—commanded—to follow. The problem is sin, we refuse to acknowledge our Creator and follow His commandments, the rest is history, and will continue until the end of history.

Democratic-Republican - alphas like sports, betas like Facebook!

For the alphas and constructive working class of our citizenry I'd say no more than two or three weeks without baseball and football ( an intentional narcotic Matrix that keeps otherwise conscientious individuals occupied from obsessing upon the corrupt uniparty and and tarring and feathering the ruling class ).

For the rest of the beta sheeple, a week or two without Kardashians and Facebook ought to do it.

One month of such "hardship" here and we get SHTF. Two months until chaos.

MarkL thinks Obama is trying to bury this story, and then the tin foil gets deep...

Is anyone else of a mind that the reason for the Obama Regime’s order to allow men with penises to use womens’ bathrooms in grade schools simply a distraction, to hide what’s going on in Venezuela, as well as the really bad stuff he’s doing here?

And while we’re on the topic, does anyone else think the reason for doing what appears to be nothing about the incredible murder rate in Chicago, and the increasing rates in major cities around the country, is to federalize all local law enforcement and effectively end the Second Amendment?