DFW Sisters From Venezuela Dread Descent Of Country

FirefightnRick · May 26, 2019

https://amp.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/michael-ryan/article230756599.html

Betty Medina had the urge to stow some table napkins in her purse on a recent visit to a Fort Worth restaurant — in case the restroom was out of paper.

It’s an instinct born of sad experience in her beloved Venezuela.

Her sister Iris, meanwhile, has found it nearly impossible to ply her legal skills in Caracas without the kind of paper a lawyer finds indispensable. Even if some is available, a one-page photocopy can cost $10.

Venezuela has basically gone paperless. Not out of social consciousness, but of social breakdown. This once-rich nation abundant in oil and minerals has been driven into poverty, hunger, chaos, violence and dependency by a quarter-century of plundering, imperious, dictatorial socialism.

Rick

DeepGreen · May 26, 2019

But, hey, socialism would be different in the U.S.!

RIGHT!

Mean Green 93-98 · May 26, 2019

1 hour ago, DeepGreen said:

But, hey, socialism would be different in the U.S.!

RIGHT!

Edited May 26, 2019 by Mean Green 93-98

meangreenlax · May 26, 2019

Social democracy does not equal a socialist dictatorship.

The American "far-left" is basically center-left compared to the rest of the world. But when juxtaposed against the American right wing, fueled by 30+ years of Reaganite austerity that seems intent on ripping apart the New Deal and taking us back to the 1920s, universal healthcare/education, anti-monopoly, pro-union policy seems crazy. FDR must be a commie, right?

Image result for fdr second bill of rights

Yet those policies are extremely popular. So popular, in fact, that Donald Trump used them on the stump to get elected.

Censored by Laurie · May 27, 2019

I can never fully tell if this baiting of the word "socialism" comes from a disingenuous or simply ignorant place.

All About UNT · May 27, 2019

9 hours ago, Censored by Laurie said:

I can never fully tell if this baiting of the word "socialism" comes from a disingenuous or simply ignorant place.

I can answer that for you

FirefightnRick · May 28, 2019

On 5/26/2019 at 1:43 PM, meangreenlax said:

Social democracy does not equal a socialist dictatorship

The American "far-left" is basically center-left compared to the rest of the world. But when juxtaposed against the American right wing, fueled by 30+ years of Reaganite austerity that seems intent on ripping apart the New Deal and taking us back to the 1920s, universal healthcare/education, anti-monopoly, pro-union policy seems crazy. FDR must be a commie, right?

Yet those policies are extremely popular. So popular, in fact, that Donald Trump used them on the stump to get elected.

You mean like when you imprison your own people in internment camps and run for a third term unlike everyone else, but your cousin?

And according to The feds we currently spend over twice the percentage of GDP on welfare today than we did in the 30’s..

So I have no idea where you get that anyone is ripping apart the new deal and taking us back to the 20’s?

Rick

Edited May 28, 2019 by FirefightnRick

HoustonEagle · May 28, 2019

3 hours ago, FirefightnRick said:

You mean like when you imprison your own people in internment camps and run for a third term unlike everyone else, but your cousin?

And according to The feds we currently spend over twice the percentage of GDP on welfare today than we did in the 30’s..

So I have no idea where you get that anyone is ripping apart the new deal and taking us back to the 20’s?

Rick

Your President just circumvented Congress to sell arms to a dictatorial regime that attacked us on 9/11 and kills journalist among countess other human rights violations. Less than a week later he was praising the dictator Kim Jun Un whom imprisons and executes hundreds of thousands of North Koreans.

You are cool with that, right?

FirefightnRick · May 28, 2019

8 hours ago, HoustonEagle said:

Your President just circumvented Congress to sell arms to a dictatorial regime that attacked us on 9/11 and kills journalist among countess other human rights violations. Less than a week later he was praising the dictator Kim Jun Un whom imprisons and executes hundreds of thousands of North Koreans.

You are cool with that, right?

Ah...there’s the expected pivot,... back to Trump. .

Rick

Edited May 28, 2019 by FirefightnRick

MGNation92 · May 28, 2019

The more responsibility we hand to the government, the less individual liberty we have.

"Conservative", Liberal, doesn't matter, it's all too powerful, too bloated, and inefficient. Venezuela is just another example of the dangers of a single central authority planning the economy.

UNTLifer · May 28, 2019

So, anybody tried this beer? Is it like a chelada?

Image result for hella chella

MGNation92 · May 28, 2019

29 minutes ago, UNTLifer said:

So, anybody tried this beer? Is it like a chelada?

Actually yes. I tried it a few weeks ago. It's not bad, definitely got a little kick to it though.

Stix · May 29, 2019

9 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

So, anybody tried this beer? Is it like a chelada?

Come to the Houston Coaches Caravan stop next Monday at the Karbach Brewery and find out for yourselves!

El Paso Eagle · May 29, 2019

On 5/28/2019 at 12:09 AM, HoustonEagle said:

Your President just circumvented Congress to sell arms to a dictatorial regime that attacked us on 9/11 and kills journalist among countess other human rights violations. Less than a week later he was praising the dictator Kim Jun Un whom imprisons and executes hundreds of thousands of North Koreans.

You are cool with that, right?

Houston I did not realize you were not an American citizen...

P.S. I guess you had NO problem with our last President sending so much money to Iran it took a plane to carry it or selling uranium to the Russians??

Edited May 29, 2019 by El Paso Eagle

emmitt01 · June 2, 2019

On 5/29/2019 at 2:24 PM, El Paso Eagle said:

Houston I did not realize you were not an American citizen...

P.S. I guess you had NO problem with our last President sending so much money to Iran it took a plane to carry it or selling uranium to the Russians??

About that whole uranium thing...

https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/dec/07/blog-posting/complex-tale-involving-hillary-clinton-uranium-rus/

FirefightnRick · June 3, 2019

10 hours ago, emmitt01 said:

About that whole uranium thing...

https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/dec/07/blog-posting/complex-tale-involving-hillary-clinton-uranium-rus/

Heck...everyone knows Hillary wasn’t president in 2010.

The Obama Administration’s Uranium One Scandal

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/uranium-one-deal-obama-administration-doj-hillary-clinton-racketeering/

.....”Uranium is foundational to nuclear power and thus to American national security. As the New York Times explainedin a report on the disturbing interplay between the Clinton Foundation and the transfer of American uranium assets to Russia, the United States gets a fifth of its electrical power from nuclear energy, but only produces a fifth of the uranium it needs. Consequently, a foreign entity would not be able to acquire rights to American uranium without the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

CFIUS is composed of the leaders of 14 U.S. government agencies involved in national security and commerce. In 2010, these included not only Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had cultivated a reputation as a hawk opposed to such foreign purchases, but Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department (and its lead agency, the FBI) were conducting the investigation of Rosatom’s ongoing U.S. racketeering, extortion, and money-laundering scheme.

In March 2010, to push the Obama “reset” agenda, Secretary Clinton traveled to Russia, where she met with Putin and Dimitri Medvedev, who was then keeping the president’s chair warm for Putin. Soon after, it emerged that Renaissance Capital, a regime-tied Russian bank, had offered Bill Clinton $500,000 to make a single speech — far more than the former president’s usual haul in what would become one of his biggest paydays ever. Renaissance was an aggressive promoter of Rosatom. The Clinton speech took place in Moscow in June. The exorbitant speech fee, it is worth noting, is a pittance compared with the $145 million Newsweek reportswas donated to the Clinton Foundation by sources linked to the Uranium One deal.

The month before the speech, the Hill reports, Bill Clinton told his wife’s State Department that he wanted to meet while in Russia with Arkady Dvorkovich, who, in addition to being a top Medvedev aide, was also a key Rosatom board member. It is not known whether the State Department gave clearance for the meeting; the question appears to have become moot since the former U.S. president met directly with Putin and Medvedev. You’ll be comforted, I’m sure, to learn that aides to the Clintons, those pillars of integrity, assure us that the topics of Rosatom and Uranium One never came up.”.....

........”There was still one other problem to tamp down. That was the informant — the lobbyist who alerted the FBI to the Russian racketeering enterprise back in 2009. He wanted to talk.

Specifically, as his attorney, Ms. Toensing, explains, the informant wanted to tell Congress what he knows — about what the FBI and the Justice Department could already have proved in 2010 when CFIUS signed off on Russia’s acquisition of American nuclear material, and about what he’d learned of Russian efforts to curry favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton. But he was not allowed to talk.

It turns out, the lawyer explains, that the FBI had induced him to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Justice Department warned him that it was enforceable — even against disclosures to Congress. (Because, you know, the FBI is opposed to all leaks and disclosures of confidential investigative information . . . except those initiated by the FBI, of course.) In addition, when the informant was primed to file a federal civil lawsuit to recover his own losses from the scheme, he claims that the Justice Department threatened him with prosecution, warning that a lawsuit would violate the non-disclosure agreement. The Hillreports that it has obtained emails from a civil lawyer retained by the witness, which describe pressure exerted by the Justice Department to silence the informant.

What a coincidence: That was in 2016, the stretch run of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”.....

Despite the uranium scandal,...I can’t help but notice that that all sure sounds like a lot of goings on between RUSSIA and a bunch of people not named Trump prior to 2016?

Rick

Rudy · June 3, 2019

On 5/26/2019 at 12:10 PM, DeepGreen said:

But, hey, socialism would be different in the U.S.!

RIGHT!

It just hasn't been done right...

DeepGreen · June 3, 2019

4 minutes ago, Rudy said:

It just hasn't been done right...

That's rich! Socialism can't be done right.

I find it very scary that so many people in this country are even entertaining Socialism in the United States. Makes me wonder what the hell is being taught in our high schools and universities these days. Never mind. I know what is not being taught.

KRAM1 · June 3, 2019

2 hours ago, DeepGreen said:

That's rich! Socialism can't be done right.

I find it very scary that so many people in this country are even entertaining Socialism in the United States. Makes me wonder what the hell is being taught in our high schools and universities these days. Never mind. I know what is not being taught.

I think you just might have missed the sarcasm.....

DeepGreen · June 3, 2019

35 minutes ago, KRAM1 said:

I think you just might have missed the sarcasm.....

Whatever

Censored by Laurie · June 3, 2019

5 hours ago, DeepGreen said:

That's rich! Socialism can't be done right.

I find it very scary that so many people in this country are even entertaining Socialism in the United States. Makes me wonder what the hell is being taught in our high schools and universities these days. Never mind. I know what is not being taught.

Jesus sure tried. Guess he got what was coming to him.