exactly.  have a venezuelan second by like half as long

I know I’m more productive during Daylight Savings Time . . .

Well, think of it this way, advance it to half an hour
once, and stop forever the nonsense of going back and
forth one hour every year because of Daylight Savings
Time.

Makes sense to me. I did not expect Chavez to be so
sensible.

dst and all the switching back and forth is a stupid idea that has something to do with the banking cartel… how else can one explain the stupidity of the idea? as for chavez, i don’t know his reasons, but on the surface they appear equally stupid.

Is that half hour before or after my siesta?

Chavez must have watched Woody Allen’s “Bananas.”

l am your new president. 

From this day on,

the official language
of San Marcos will be Swedish. 

(Silence)

ln addition to that,
all citizens will be required

to change their underwear
every half hour.


Underwear will be worn on the outside

so we can check.


Furthermore,all children under 10 years old

are now 10 years old.

hugo is showing signs of being the captain of industry that his mentor in habana was during his years as captain of all things related to industry and economy, cuba may have fought valiantly for its cause around the globe but marxism lenism has proven itself to be nothing more than the bellicose arm of an economic model of enslavement and hopelesness.

the late and not-too-lamented president of Turkmenistan renamed the months, one of them after his mum.

oh, and of course Idi Amin proclaimed himself king of scotlanad.

shouldn’t there be some sort of oscars or emmys for such lunatic pronouncements from loony tyrants?

gw bush would be sure to win quite a few.

Justin sed: “If the government can regulate metabolism and productivity in this manner, when why not accelerate time by an hour or two, quite possibly three? At this rate, we’ll all be hurtling headlong into—what? Insanity, perhaps. Or just plain old economic ignorance.”

Oh pooh! It’s hardly worse then the utopian nonsense
about “free markets” that so-called “libertarians” of
the Alan Greenspan/Tom Friedman variety would replace
it with.

Laissez Faire Capitalism, like Commmunism is a nice theory, but
it just plain never works as promised.

Before you complain about Chavez, you ought to put
your own utopian Libertarian nonsense about “free
markets” in perspective. Nothing that Chavez is spouting
is hardly worse then the kind of idiocy that is
being played out on Wall Street about the bundling
and reselling of bad real estate loans. Or anything
for that matter that has come up of Alan Greenspan’s
management of the monetary system. Or Tom Friedman’s
nonsense about a “flat world” that is really just
old style British Imperialism, repackaged for the
I-Pod generation.

Much as I am strongly opposed to Chavez’s government, this time change is reasonable. It will set time in Venezuela to what it was many many years ago (I grew up with it), it is based on a meridian passing very close to Caracas which very nearly at the center of the country; but then about forty years or so it was set to coincide with New York summer time (any reasons you can think of?). By the way, we are so close to the equator that winter-summer times make no real difference.

“My question is: why only half an hour? If the government can regulate metabolism and productivity in this manner, when why not accelerate time by an hour or two, quite possibly three?”

Probably something to do with that big yellow ball in the sky. Really, Justin, is this the best critique of Chavez you can manage?

Hugo’s challenging of the status quo is a good thing regardless of its supposed quirky nature.  We live in a world where we are told to eat shit and like it because “they” tell us it tastes good.  I lost my appetite a long time ago.

Does this really tell us anything of political, social or intellectual value?

Why do you assume that the reader is more interested in this kind of cheap ridicule and petty trivialisation than actual insights and analysis of Chavez’s Bolivarian ideas and their practical application across Venezuelan society?

Hugo Chavez moves the clock half and hour and keeps it
there for good.

While we move our clocks back and forth twice a year.

And we laugh at him??????

Justin you can do better than this.  Chavez
is a leader who seems concerned about the life of
common people and is actually using his power for the good
of the majority. What a concept - especially in the Americas!

Public, there is so much wrong in your post, you really must be a man of the people. Tom Friedman is not a Libertarian; he is a Neoliberal, and here of late he is been on a nutty Green kick. The Federal Reserve is not a capitalist institution, it is a government granted monopoly whose manipulation of the market weakens the value of our currency among other malevolent things. Paleolibertarians like Justin are not Utopian. It is the only political ideology based upon the idea of not contradicting the laws of economics. Other ideologies to a greater or lesser extent have a rationale that systemic good intentions or cults of personality make the world go around.

Justin by demonizing the democratically elected Hugo Chavez, you help promote and advance the neo-con Bush administratin’s pro-war agenda in Latin America( a war on poor people essentially).

What a phony you are. I never realized how much you hate poor people. Although I should have figured this out several years ago when you refered to homeless men in San Francisco as bums in a antiwar.com cloumn. I’m sure George W Bush feels the same way.

Justin is just another control queen who hates the fact that those little brown people in Latin America are choosing the life they want.

Why interfere?  Let them rise or fail on their own, without American intervention.

Are you just afraid that Venezuela might actually produce a society that’s better than the one it replaced?

chavez is a good heartead man

I agree with the last few comments. Chavez has been good for the majority of Venezuelans.  Let him do as he likes; he is no threat.  At least his laws seem only laughable, not sinister.