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"Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check."
Why
on the outside? Because it will make it easier to enforce the
decree that "all citizens will be required to change their
underwear every half hour," as the new dictator of San Marcos
declares in Woody Allen's
Bananas (1971). Venezuela's maximum leader and the
world's chief proponent of Bolivarian
Revolution, Hugo Chavez, is making Allen's parody look almost
prescient. For example, Chavez recently denounced golf as a
bourgeois sport and wants to nationalize his country's courses to
provide housing and parks for the poor. As Cybergolf reports:
"I respect all the sports, all of them, but there are sports and there are sports," Chavez told supporters on his national TV show, Aló Presidente ("Hello, President!"), this summer. "Can someone tell me, 'Is this a sport of the people?' "
"Noooooo," government officials in the audience replied.
Of course, this wouldn't be the first time that a politician has tried to rile the plebes with a fake controversy in order to distract a restive population from his country's real problems.
@|10.14.09 @ 8:58AM|#
his national TV show, Aló Presidente
If it's anything like Sabado Gigante, it must be awesome!
|10.14.09 @ 9:01AM|#
his national TV show, Aló Presidente ("Hello, President!")
Say what you will about my friend Hugo, but you have to admit he has some good ideas. I heard CBS is looking for someone to go up against Jay Leno...
D-FENS|10.14.09 @ 9:01AM|#
Of course, as a disgruntled aerospace engineer and fan of Falling Down, I can understand Max Leader's sentiment on this one... "You should have children playing here, you should have families having picnics, you should have a goddamn petting zoo. But instead you've got these stupid electric carts for you old men with nothing better to do."
If you ever see me on a golf course, I'll be on my KLR, evading the police. Just never felt the attraction.
|10.14.09 @ 9:04AM|#
I wonder if Venezuela is one of those "certain South American countries" where it's legal to kill your wife if she insults you.
D-FENS|10.14.09 @ 12:07PM|#
Ha! Not sure about wives in VZ, but probably "yes" on opposition media and politicians...
Skid Marx|10.14.09 @ 9:18AM|#
I suspect that Hugo sucks at all sports. Most wood tick shaped people are.
robc|10.14.09 @ 9:18AM|#
I didnt realize you walked 4-5 miles playing darts (more if you hit like I do).
Golf isnt played with carts. That is some other sport, like the one with windmills.
|10.14.09 @ 9:25AM|#
I walk at least 4-5 miles while playing darts. Walking to the dartboard to retrieve darts, walking to my beer and back to the line, walking to the toliet, walking to the bar to order another beer, walking to the toliet again, walking to the jukebox, walking back to my beer...
|10.14.09 @ 9:26AM|#
Strange. I didn't know the official language of Venezuela was Swedish.
We embedded the bit where the new president of San Marcos makes his insane declarations.
|10.14.09 @ 9:35AM|#
And Chavez is a liar to boot. I heard Caracas was going to be the site of the upcoming Danny Glover Pro-Am Invitational.
Xeones|10.14.09 @ 9:41AM|#
Don't dis on golf courses, yo. They're fun to ride mountain bikes across.
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|10.14.09 @ 9:45AM|#
Weathersfield Country Club offerred some kick ass sledding, until the maintenence guy ran us off.
|10.14.09 @ 9:49AM|#
Where is Sugerfree to do the dirty work of digging up the quotes from Joe about how Chavez is a real Democrat.
|10.14.09 @ 11:28AM|#
joe|11.6.07 @ 2:51PM|#
John,
Every election Chavez won was certified as fair and open by international monitors.
Putin? Not so much.
If you can't tell the difference between a free election and a Cuba-style charade, you really shouldn't try to comment on the progress of democracy in other countries.
joe's assertion that Chevez is not a dictator always stood on the shaky ground that the elections are fair.
He fooled no one in the fact that promoting the idea of a democratically-elected socialist government was just a stalking horse for what he wanted to happen here.
|10.14.09 @ 11:41AM|#
Charming.
joe|2.15.08 @ 12:32PM|#
Aw, whattsamatter, "B," I kicked your ass too many times as "Chavez is a Thug" that you needed to invent a different screen name to live down the shame? I guess the ease of finding idiotic comments of yours from previous threads just made your trollery a self-refuting process, eh?
And seriously, "B?" You came up with "B?" That's actually pretty smart, since a search on your handle is sure to return thousands of completely unrelated comments.
Yeah, I'm so fucking dumb I was the only one who stated, before Chavez's lost election, that he didn't own the electoral system and Venezuela's democracy was strong enough to hand him a defeat.
Maybe you should adopt a more accurate handle, like PWNED, because at this point, I've done the cyber-equivalent of stuffing your head and mounting it on my wall.
|10.14.09 @ 9:57AM|#
This is not a sport of the people!
Note to groundskeepers, caddies, clubhouse staff, farmers who produce grass and seeds, tractor mechanics, irrigation techs, cart repairmen, etc.: Unemployment is what we mean by "of the people".
|10.14.09 @ 10:02AM|#
At least ten or twenty years ago, golf was a mad working class sport in the US. When I was working those kinds of jobs, metal fabricator, parts warehouse guy and so forth, most of my co-workers were mad golfers. With the spread of public courses, golf became a real middle class sport.
Citizen Nothing|10.14.09 @ 9:58AM|#
Idea: Ban carts and give all those people now living in the clubhouse jobs as caddies.
roystgnr|10.14.09 @ 10:07AM|#
It's the myopia of the socialist thinker:
Creating a beautiful space ourselves is unimaginable, but look! Here's a beautiful place that exists for some reason which deserves no closer examination! We don't have to create anything as long as we can take the things that those evil capitalists have!
PC|10.14.09 @ 10:09AM|#
Does anyone think that Ed Shultz just powders his face on TV to hide his tan? If only he could shut down the US stations to help his crummy ratings. These guys sound quite alike, and I don't believe I have ever seen him and Chavez in the same room, which is unusual for libs on TV.
|10.14.09 @ 10:14AM|#
Didn't George Carlin do a bit about this? I know I have seen it on YouTube.
That a South American dictator is down there scouring YouTube for ideas on how to further screw people out of their property would be funny if it weren't so predictable.
Kolohe|10.14.09 @ 12:27PM|#
yes, that's what I came here to say. He did it in one of his HBO specials in the late 80's early 90's.
JB|10.14.09 @ 11:45AM|#
If I could get Chavez and a few select others in a room, it would be well worth it.
bubba|10.14.09 @ 12:19PM|#
Around here, we build golf courses in flood plains. The land isn't really suitable for anything else.
Sounds like a perfect place to build housing for the poor.
Ivan Osorio|10.14.09 @ 12:27PM|#
Here's the actual clip from the movie -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qff098NCNDE
Mike Laursen|10.14.09 @ 12:52PM|#
This morning, NPR gave serious consideration to the merits of Chavez' arguments for closing golf courses.
|10.14.09 @ 1:13PM|#
"I respect all the sports, all of them, but there are sports and
there are sports," Chavez. We need a Sweedish Chavez so we can
get rid of Lugeing. And that thing were you slide teapots on ice.
That discus thing is actually pretty silly too.
OK - simplify. Football, baseball, basketball. And you have to
carry two balls in your own sac to play.
stuartl|10.14.09 @ 1:43PM|#
How can you guys belittle Chavez? Don't you know that Venezuela moved up 5 places on the always accurate UN Human Development Index? It is because Chavez understands what is important to the real people. Golf suppresses human development.
Paul|10.14.09 @ 2:14PM|#
but there are sports and there are sports,
You guys do have to admit he's got a point...
|10.14.09 @ 4:50PM|#
Hey! He might be on to something.
No Tiger Woods in golf and all those commercials.
Like not seeing OBAMA for ever on TV.
Think about it!
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