I'm not going to comment on your remarks on Venezuela because I will again say that I understand you are speaking from personal experience and that I respect that fact.

My primary concern in this thread remains the level of ignorance and/or lack of knowledge or coherent thought displayed in the opening post here.

Mainly what I think is that there is a lack of understanding in this country of how Hugo Chavez and Venezuelans operated/operate because as Penn pointed out we had loons on the right going on television and advocating for the assassination of Chavez.

I'm not sure how people took into consideration how insane Robertson's comments were...which were then repeated, trumpeted, and openly agreed with by wide variety of right wing nuts but let's put them on the table in this thread because they are, as Penn says in the video Marc posted, the heart of what triggered his interest in going to Venezuela and writing about what he found:

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with. You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war and I don't think any oil shipments will stop." -Pat Robertson founder of the Christian Coalition of America and former Republican presidential candidate

Now, if I dreamed up a character like Robertson and wrote those words in a novel or screenplay they would probably be seen as black comedy...and on a certain level they are truly hilarious...and if I wrote into this novel or screenplay the reaction of the right wing media morons and many right wing politicians to Robertson's remarks...well, I think 30 years ago people might have found all of that "over the top comedy" and laughed at it or dismissed it as ridiculous extremism and a flight of fictional fancy.

I mean that a self proclaimed emissary of Jesus was standing up openly to advocate murder was just the bold vaudevillian/trouser dropping aspect of this particular nonsense...that Robertson was really just setting the table for the all out orgy of ignorance that followed was where things grew oh so dark.

Sadly, none of that is fiction.

So, would I blame Oliver Stone or Sean Penn for reacting in the way that they did and going direct to Chavez and Venezuela to try to better explore what was going on...not in any way, shape, or form...certainly not.

Our media is often consumed by the ridiculous, the reactionary, the redundant, and nothing breaks through all that painfully pointless howling. The result of this, in general, is the public is not being educated or informed but instead is just being asked to "take sides."

Here we get to the heart of Marc's opening shot in this thread. The comments he makes are about "taking sides" and placing Penn on a "side" and twisting the situation to meet some grossly misinformed agenda.

This is what bothers me. I don't care what Marc thinks about Sean Penn but what Marc says about Penn reflects the right wing media approach to these things. He does not comment on anything Penn says but instead attempts to slander/kill the messenger. Penn does not call Chavez his buddy and he does not ever say that Venezuela is a better place to live or better run than the United States. Penn does not characterize Chavez as the second coming of Christ or claim that we should be electing him president of the United States and he never utters anything that indicates he thinks Venezuela has under Chavez become any sort of Eden.

So, just as in his gun control thread, everything Marc has wrote in this thread is dishonest, misinformation, blatantly meant to slander and anger people, and a horrific example of how ignorant of the facts he may actually be...unless of course he is just yanking our collective chains and then if that is what he is doing...well...he should get a new hobby.

"I'm not a huge fan of subsidies of any kind, but one can see why the one for heating oil could make some sense." -Ross

It does make sense and it has been a vitally important program during these times of economic upheaval.

"Better would be to put that spending into infrastructure to get people converted over to alternate supplies. It's a better long-term solution."

This is one of those ideas that sounds good, looks good, and is correct but would not work in reality and the reason for that is the cost to create that conversion and build that infrastructure far exceeds the cost to run a successful oil subsidy program. As an example many neighborhoods across Massachusetts and the country do not have gas supply lines running into them to feed the homes there.

Even in neighborhoods where you have wealthy or middle class customers that would like to convert to gas...if the supply lines are not run into that neighborhood the gas companies will not commit to running those lines unless at least 70% of the neighborhood commits to converting to gas.

So, while you are correct that it would be greatly beneficial and wonderful to spend on infrastructure and conversion programs...nobody will commit to the cost of doing this and when the government already is gridlocked, sequestered, and crying poor there is no money going to be doled out for this...making these oil subsidy programs critical. Perhaps Big Energy could ride to the rescue here and agree to fund these programs with their profits and slash their bonus and pay across the board at the executive level to do so...I'm thinking a guy like Ray could help out with this:

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/12/WJ7X.html

I mean $198.44 million in salary and bonus money in 5 years and a compensation number of $80.73 million per year...he really must be feeling the fiscal crunch.

I would also say that these infrastructure and conversion programs you are talking about would take years to complete and really should have began back in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Instead we got a nonstop agenda of deregulation and financial chicanery that led to a series of economic crises that put us in a spot where now that we see what we should be doing...we can't do it until we solve our fiscal mess...or really even come to an agreement on what our fiscal mess really is...because it seems as a country we can't even do that at this point.