The article this links to is required reading.
WorkingForChange-Will Venezuela get the Florida treatment?: "Whatever it is, OUR President has decided that THEIR president has to go. This is none too easy given that Chavez is backed by Venezuela's poor. And the US oil industry, joined with local oligarchs, has made sure a vast majority of Venezuelans remain poor.
Therefore, Chavez is expected to win this coming Sunday's recall vote. That is, if the elections are free and fair.
They won't be. Some months ago, a little birdie faxed to me what appeared to be confidential pages from a contract between John Ashcroft's Justice Department and a company called ChoicePoint, Inc., of Atlanta. The deal is part of the War on Terror.
Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens on whom to spy caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?
What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates -- presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez -- have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush."
We've been making fun of Euro-Disney for years, but theme parks suddenly seem like one of Florida's better international cultural exports now that we are exporting jeb's own special brand of democrazy. We can only pray that the sunny state never starts exporting its architecture or interior decorating.
What has FL been up to anyway? Are they upset that despite their geography they will never be part of the South (if you are reading this from Pensacola thinking to yourself, 'I'm southern and I live in Florida,' you are half right: you are southern, but you live in Alabama, Florida starts in Tallahassee)? It takes more than really bad racist politics to be southern, and God knows we don't have have the corner on that market anymore, we just get more press on it. The real south has been kind of trying to get out of that whole business for a while now anyway, although we have as late have reasserted a strong commitment to consistently having miserably bad governors, even if we have to import them. And as far as bad southern politics go, LA is never going to give up the prize for most fucked up blatantly politics, despite TX's persitent attempts to dethrown them.
Maybe it isn't just Florida that is fucked up. Maybe just getting a bush in office sends everything straight to hell.
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