The meltdown of socialism in Venezuela isn't necessarily important news in the United States, except as an abject lesson in the evils of socialism. But that lesson will be lost on the Left here, as is evidenced by a little media bias.
First, the view from the Right:
Fox News:
The U.S. slammed the elections in Venezuela on whether to grant the country’s ruling party unlimited power Sunday, vowing “strong and swift actions against the architects of authoritarianism.”In addition:
The State Department released a statement in response to what it called a flawed election of a constitutional super-body under President Nicolas Maduro.
...Venezuelan electoral authorities said on Sunday that more than 8 million people voted to create a constitutional assembly endowing Maduro's ruling socialist party with virtually unlimited powers.
Members of the opposition said they believed between 2 million and 3 million people voted and one well-respected independent analysis put the number at 3.6 million.
An exit poll based on surveys from 110 voting centers by New York investment bank Torino Capital and a Venezuela public opinion company estimated 3.6 million people voted, or about 18.5 percent of registered voters.
"The results thus suggest that the government maintains an important loyal core of supporters that it can mobilize in both electoral and non-electoral scenarios," the report concluded.
The same exit poll also noted that Venezuela has an estimated 2.6 million government employees, "suggesting that a large fraction of the votes could have not been voluntary."
Fox News:
Venezuelans stayed away from the polls in massive numbers on Sunday in a show of protest against a vote to grant President Nicolas Maduro's ruling socialist party virtually unlimited powers in the face of a brutal socio-economic crisis and a grinding battle against its political opponents and groups of increasingly alienated and violent young protesters.Looks pretty ugly, right? Anyone can argue why socialism failed in Venezuela, but there is no doubt it has. This leaves the Left in America in a difficult situation, especially the media. How does one defend their political ideology when faced with an obvious example of failure?
The government swore to continue its push for total political dominance of this once-prosperous OPEC nation, a move likely to trigger U.S. sanctions and new rounds of the street fighting that has killed at least 122 and wounded nearly 2,000 since protests began in April.
Venezuela's chief prosecutor's office reported seven deaths Sunday in clashes between protesters and police across the country. Seven police officers were wounded when an explosion went off as they drove past piles of trash that had been used to blockade a street in an opposition stronghold in eastern Caracas.
Across the capital of more than 2 million people, dozens of polling places were virtually empty, including many that saw hours-long lines of thousands voting to keep the government in power over the last two decades. By contrast, at the Poliedro sports and cultural complex in western Caracas, several thousand people waited about two hours to vote, many drawn from opposition-dominated neighborhoods where polling places were closed. But at least three dozen other sites visited by The Associated Press had no more than a few hundred voters at any one time, with many virtually empty.
Opposition leaders had called for a boycott of the vote, declaring it rigged for the ruling party, and by late afternoon they were declaring the low turnout a resounding victory.
CNN:
WHAT?! That is the headline?Hopefully, the story gets better. Let us see how far into the story we can get before the objective TRUTH leaks into it:
President Nicolás Maduro has thanked "the brave people of Venezuela" for voting in a controversial election for a new Constituent Assembly that will have the power to rewrite his country's constitution.Wow. Four paragraphs.
The election will allow Maduro to replace Venezuela's current legislative body -- the National Assembly -- with the new assembly, made up 545 members, all nominated by his administration.
"We have a Constituent Assembly. I said, come hell or high water-- and hell and high water came -- and the Constituent Assembly arrived from the hand of the people, from its conscience," Maduro said, claiming victory.
The opposition boycotted the election as a fraud and has called for massive protests to begin again Monday.
And what about those protests?
CNN:
Deadly clashes between protesters and police marred voting on Sunday, as Venezuelans cast ballots on a controversial measure that could mark a turning point for their country.You have to read 9 paragraphs into the story before the opposition gets mentioned.
The election will allow President Nicolás Maduro to replace Venezuela's current legislative body -- the National Assembly -- with a new institution called the Constituent Assembly that will have the power to rewrite the constitution.
By the way, to get to the article about the protests, you have to go through that first article. There is no link on the front page of CNN. This is shameless bias.
In CNN's defense, they did get the John Kelly analysis correct:
CNN:
In case you missed it Friday, President Trump replaced chief of staff Rence Priebus with General John Kelly. But CNN brought up an excellent historical precedent to describe how Kelly's tenure is likely to go:The best comparison might be Gen. Alexander Haig, who became chief of staff for an embattled Richard Nixon in 1973.
Right in the middle of the Watergate investigation, Nixon turned to Haig when H.R. Haldeman resigned on August 30, 1973. The appeal was clear. The 47-year-old career military officer had worked as a senior military adviser to national security adviser Henry Kissinger and as Army vice chief of staff. Haig brought the kind of "can-do" attitude toward problems that the President hoped would help him.
"He'll be superb in the new job. He'll get decisions made, orders implemented and papers flowing into the President's office," predicted President Lyndon Johnson's aide Joseph Califano, "He'll work 20 hours a day, and he knows how to get along with people." Haig, who had shown his scrappy character by earning enough money to pay for college by delivering newspapers and working in a department store after his father died when he was only 10 years old, was a compelling figure with strong convictions and an unyielding drive.
The problem for Haig -- and Kelly might want to take note -- was that there was little he could do to turn around the dire situation he inherited. By the time he was hired, Nixon was deep into battle mode, combating the multiple investigations that were taking place into his administration. The investigators were already exposing a deeply troubled president who had abused executive power and acted in vindictive ways toward his perceived adversaries. Nixon had allowed many people to work for his administration who didn't have a strong ethical compass and who had been willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve success. And, as the "smoking gun tape" recording would reveal, Nixon had been willing to obstruct justice in 1972.
There was nothing Haig could do to make all this go away. Indeed, Haig, though not without a spine, became part of the problem. He was the person who delivered the instructions to acting Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre.In Kelly's case, do we really need someone who will just fuel Trump's worst behavior?
As a loyal foot soldier, he fueled some of Nixon's worst behavior.
That said, a good chief of staff is just a reflection of a good boss. If Trump is a good boss, and that remains to be seen, then Kelly will be a better choice than Rence Preibus, who was clearly over his head in the job.
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