Orderly Orinoco outing...

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"Maduro recall petition in Venezuela gets 200% more signatures than needed" [Link]....And more...on the first day! Venezuela creeps slowly towards 'salvation': recall of Krusty II Nick Ripe is now a slight possibility with the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (the awfully corrupt CNE, the Unimaginable Weasel-Fucking Doom Demon personified by Tibisay Lucena) saying about two hundred thousand signatures would be needed to spark a recall of the President. That went well:

"CNE had given us a month to collect 197,978 signatures to begin the recall process. Many multiples of that have come out to sign, handily exceeding the target in all 24 states. How many? The Wall Street Journal says 1.1 million by the end of day one. We understand the tally by the end of day two is substantially higher than that, but we haven’t been able to confirm a number."

"Know Hope"; "Nobody - not in the government, not in the opposition - was expecting the avalanche of people we've seen yesterday and today signing to request Maduro's recall" say Caracas Chronicles.

Orderly Orinoco outing...

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"Maduro recall petition in Venezuela gets 200% more signatures than needed" [Link]....And more...on the first day! Venezuela creeps slowly towards 'salvation': recall of Krusty II Nick Ripe is now a slight possibility with the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (the awfully corrupt CNE, the Unimaginable Weasel-Fucking Doom Demon personified by Tibisay Lucena) saying about two hundred thousand signatures would be needed to spark a recall of the President. That went well:

"CNE had given us a month to collect 197,978 signatures to begin the recall process. Many multiples of that have come out to sign, handily exceeding the target in all 24 states. How many? The Wall Street Journal says 1.1 million by the end of day one. We understand the tally by the end of day two is substantially higher than that, but we haven’t been able to confirm a number."

"Know Hope"; "Nobody - not in the government, not in the opposition - was expecting the avalanche of people we've seen yesterday and today signing to request Maduro's recall" say Caracas Chronicles.

Orinoco oligarch...

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Alo Presidente! "The Realest Reality Show in the World": "In the end, it doesn’t matter much what these people say when the cameras are rolling; and, of course, the opposite is true of Chavez"... "Anything he decides or does or says on the show instantly becomes the audience’s reality, in a tangible way, regardless of whether they are watching. [It] is unlike anything else on television." Rachel Nolan in NYT Magazine; it is quite a perceptive article for someone 'new' to Venezuelan politics (she comments that she discovered the 'show's' exuberant weirdness only after she began following the IMHO tractor stats and other amusing new-speak of Chavez on Twitter). Any 'normal' reality TV show...

"no matter how engaging or successful or artfully put together, is always, in essence, a distraction from life. “Aló Presidente” inverts this formula, at least for Venezuelans."

Hat-tip Caracas Chronicles.

Orinoco oligarch...

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Alo Presidente! "The Realest Reality Show in the World": "In the end, it doesn’t matter much what these people say when the cameras are rolling; and, of course, the opposite is true of Chavez"... "Anything he decides or does or says on the show instantly becomes the audience’s reality, in a tangible way, regardless of whether they are watching. [It] is unlike anything else on television." Rachel Nolan in NYT Magazine; it is quite a perceptive article for someone 'new' to Venezuelan politics (she comments that she discovered the 'show's' exuberant weirdness only after she began following the IMHO tractor stats and other amusing new-speak of Chavez on Twitter). Any 'normal' reality TV show...

"no matter how engaging or successful or artfully put together, is always, in essence, a distraction from life. “Aló Presidente” inverts this formula, at least for Venezuelans."

Hat-tip Caracas Chronicles.