# President Chavez Insults Angela Merkle **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 12, 2008, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104 "2008-05-12T23:20:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![kitemaker\_chuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a88e4f/32.png) [@kitemaker\_chuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitemaker_chuck)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2008, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/1 "2008-05-12T23:20:22Z")
Have any fellow Dopers heard anything about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez insulting German Chancellor Angela Merkle? (My apologies if I spelled her last name wrong.) Supposedly, (according to a report from AP), he insulted her by saying something to the effect that her political party “shared the ideals of Adolph Hitler”. If this is true, why would he say such a thing? ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2008, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/2 "2008-05-12T23:24:54Z")
He’s taking up the left-wing, populist, anti-Western country position that was abandoned after Castro lost support from the Soviets. By strategically antagonizing some people he gains the support of others, the group that opposes the “establishment”. Notice that he only goes after “Old Europe” and the United States. It’s posturing, nothing more. It gets him in the papers and keeps his face on the TV. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2008, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/3 "2008-05-12T23:27:42Z")
[Google](http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN1152289820080512?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews) appears to still be up and operational. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2008, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/4 "2008-05-13T18:21:26Z")
It’s Merkel, incidentally (As a fellow Hamburger by birth I’d like to that to call her Merkle would be painting her as a Swabian, an insult if there ever was one (spoken as a Hamburger living in Swabia 😉 )) It’s a very minor foreign news item here in Germany, and Mrs. Merkel seems to have decided not to make an issue of it (Chávez is considered a clown here anyway) ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2008, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/5 "2008-05-13T18:34:34Z")
Chavez is considered a clown in most places. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2008, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/6 "2008-05-13T19:00:44Z")
[QUOTE=kitemaker\_chuck] Supposedly, (according to a report from AP), he insulted her by saying something to the effect that her political party “shared the ideals of Adolph Hitler”. [/QUOTE] Godwin! ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Lance_Murdoch)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2008, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/7 "2008-05-13T19:48:32Z")
You haven’t arrived until Chavez has taken a shot at you. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2008, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/8 "2008-05-13T20:13:30Z")
Heads up, Hugo: [Christian Democratic Union.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Union_%28Germany%29) [National Socialist German Workers Party.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_party) It’s easy to get them confused. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/9 "2008-05-14T01:43:30Z")
First Bush grabs her then Chavez insults her. She’s gonna avoid this hemisphere entirely. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/10 "2008-05-14T02:34:03Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Chavez is considered a clown in most places. [/QUOTE] But not the circus! There he’s still a dick. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/11 "2008-05-14T02:39:36Z")
I chuckle every time I see the Heating Oil ads around Brooklyn. 1-800-Joe-4-Oil. It’s laughable that a country that can’t take care of it’s own people should give aid to the richest nation on the planet. Chavez is running his nation into the dirt, squandering record profits. It’s a damn shame, but I can’t help but chuckle when I see those ads. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/12 "2008-05-14T17:10:41Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] I chuckle every time I see the Heating Oil ads around Brooklyn. 1-800-Joe-4-Oil. It’s laughable that a country that can’t take care of it’s own people should give aid to the richest nation on the planet. Chavez is running his nation into the dirt, squandering record profits. It’s a damn shame, but I can’t help but chuckle when I see those ads. [/QUOTE] This statement made no sense to me. Please explain? ---
**Author:** ![TJVM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b38774/32.png) [@TJVM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJVM)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/13 "2008-05-14T17:32:23Z")
The Joe-4-Oil phone number is for a [subsidized oil program](http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/2008/01/10/calling-joe-4-oil.html) supported by Citgo, the state-owned Venezuelan oil company. In other words, the government of Venezuela is providing aid to poor(er) Americans. Many view this as a bit of political theater by Hugo Chavez, intended to make the U.S. look bad. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/14 "2008-05-14T17:33:48Z")
[QUOTE=TJVM] The Joe-4-Oil phone number is for a [subsidized oil program](http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/2008/01/10/calling-joe-4-oil.html) supported by Citgo, the state-owned Venezuelan oil company. In other words, the government of Venezuela is providing aid to poor(er) Americans. Many view this as a bit of political theater by Hugo Chavez, intended to make the U.S. look bad. [/QUOTE] If so, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the Venezuelan economy, as **mswas** assumes. Depends on how big a bite it puts on the budget. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/15 "2008-05-14T20:02:21Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] If so, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the Venezuelan economy, as **mswas** assumes. Depends on how big a bite it puts on the budget. [/QUOTE] It’s not bad per se. I don’t think that this particular policy is hurting the Venezuelan economy. The thing is that there is this bit of political theater while Chavez’s policies in general are running his country into the ground. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/16 "2008-05-14T20:10:11Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] The thing is that there is this bit of political theater while Chavez’s policies in general are running his country into the ground. [/QUOTE] What policies, and how are they hurting? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/17 "2008-05-14T20:14:41Z")
> **[An Empty Revolution](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/south-america/empty-revolution)** > > Even critics of Hugo Chávez tend to concede that he has made helping the poor his top priority. But in fact, Chávez's government has not done any more to fight poverty than past Venezuelan governments, and his much-heralded social programs have had... > [@](#): > > On December 2, when Venezuelans delivered President Hugo Chávez his first electoral defeat in nine years, most analysts were taken by surprise. According to official results, 50.7 percent of voters rejected Chávez’s proposed constitutional reform, which would have expanded executive power, gotten rid of presidential term limits, and paved the way for the construction of a “socialist” economy. It was a major reversal for a president who just a year earlier had won a second six-year term with 62.8 percent of the vote, and commentators scrambled to piece together an explanation. They pointed to idiosyncratic factors, such as the birth of a new student movement and the defection of powerful groups from Chávez’s coalition. But few went so far as to challenge the conventional wisdom about how Chávez has managed to stay in power for so long. > > Although opinions differ on whether Chávez’s rule should be characterized as authoritarian or democratic, just about everyone appears to agree that, in contrast to his predecessors, Chávez has made the welfare of the Venezuelan poor his top priority. His government, the thinking goes, has provided subsidized food to low-income families, redistributed land and wealth, and poured money from Venezuela’s booming oil industry into health and education programs. It should not be surprising, then, that in a country where politics was long dominated by rich elites, he has earned the lasting support of the Venezuelan poor. > > That story line may be compelling to many who are rightly outraged by Latin America’s deep social and economic inequalities. Unfortunately, it is wrong. Neither official statistics nor independent estimates show any evidence that Chávez has reoriented state priorities to benefit the poor. Most health and human development indicators have shown no significant improvement beyond that which is normal in the midst of an oil boom. Indeed, some have deteriorated worryingly, and official estimates indicate that income inequality has increased. The “Chávez is good for the poor” hypothesis is inconsistent with the facts. > > My skepticism of this notion began during my tenure as chief economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly. In September 2000, I left American academia to take over a research team with functions broadly similar to those of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. I had high expectations for Chávez’s government and was excited at the possibility of working in an administration that promised to focus on fighting poverty and inequality. But I quickly discovered how large the gap was between the government’s rhetoric and the reality of its political priorities. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2008, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/18 "2008-05-14T20:15:06Z")
At least he refrained from berrating the Germans as Venezuela’s[colonial oppressors](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonization_of_the_Americas) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/19 "2008-05-15T13:04:09Z")
As Chavez-related news items go, that described in the OP is not really that important at all. [But this is.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403785.html?hpid=topnews) ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104/20 "2008-05-16T15:12:05Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] As Chavez-related news items go, that described in the OP is not really that important at all. [But this is.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403785.html?hpid=topnews) [/QUOTE] I’ve been watching this myself. Chavez seems to have been deep in bed with Columbia’s worst elements. I’d say “rebel” is too kind a term here. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-chavez-insults-angela-merkle/449104.md?page=2)