Per the latest batch of WikiLeaks, a cable from Caracas, Venezuela was sent to Washington in January entitled “Making Socialism Easier to Swallow.” WHY WAS THIS SENT? OUR TAX DOLLARS ARE BEING SPENT STUDYING SOCIALISM TO PICK UP TIPS ON HOW TO DO IT. Obviously, as this was sent to Hillary Clinton, or “RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0292,” it’s part of a secret flow of information to the committee to re-elect Barack Obama. It has seemed so obvious to all of America, which hates socialism and its evil methods of taking away everyone’s Medicare, that Obama will be repudiated in 2012 for sentencing our dear philosopher, Capitalism, to drink hemlock. But what if he has discovered a method in the jungles of South (Fake) America to make voters like socialism? This proves Obama is morally weak.
¶2. (U) President Chavez opened the “Arepera Socialista” with much fanfare on December 22, advertising its low price and high quality as symbolic of the benefits of his socialist revolution. (Note:
“Arepas” are a Venezualan-style thick cornmeal tortilla usually
used for a type of sandwich. End Note.) The restaurant, located
in a lower middle class neighborhood of Caracas, serves “arepas”
for about a fourth of their regular price. It is currently only
open during weekday mornings, although there are plans to extend
its hours, add coffee and fresh juice to its menu, and open two new
locations in working class neighborhoods.¶3. (SBU) On a January 8 visit, EmbOffs witnessed a long line of
people waiting to get into the restaurant but surprisingly rapid
service. Inside, one wall was dominated by a quote in large red
lettering from Simon Bolivar: “The best system of government is
that which produces the greatest happiness.” An employee managing
the line said the restaurant served 1,200 customers per day. One
man in line said he worked in the neighborhood and came every day
since the food was excellent and cheap.
All of the ingredients, down to the juice boxes, are made by government-owned companies. This is a vicious crime against humanity and Capri Sun, the rightful capitalist victor over all boxed-juicedom.
Comment: Let Them Eat Arepas
Never! We must stop this secret socialist study now. LET EVERYBODY IN YOUR TOWN KNOW OBAMA WILL TRY TO OPEN A CHEAP AREPA JOINT ACROSS FROM THE MINI MALL BETWEEN THE SONIC AND THE APPLEBEE’S. There will be no traditional restaurant manners in these places. Only Sharia law. [WikiLeaks]
{ 118 comments }
Socialism should eat more pineapple, heard that makes it go down easier.
Pass through easier, too.
Used to eat there, but it gave me gas.
So basically Obama's Soshulism will begin with a government takeover of DC's taco trucks. Good to know.
Dude, if we could get good taco trucks out in the midwest (surprisingly not legal in most states around here unless you lease a parking lot) that would be awesome. Al Pastor para todos!
Yeah, I hear you, moving to CA was the best decision I ever made, food-wise.
"The matter with Kansas" is clearly a shortage of comida mexicana!
Or at least comidas buenas. Plenty of frijoles refritos, not enough chorizo/lengua/chicharonnes (outside of Chicago and certain neighborhoods in St. Louis).
I used to live in Chicago, and one thing that shocked me was how there were no food vendors or news stands. Why do Midwesterners hate convenience?
They just introduced legislation to create a permit category for truck vendors. Part of the problem historically was weather – can't really sell hot dogs when they freeze in the carts – but also the objections of restaurant syndicates. Downstate, we have this weird phenomenon of the state fair food trailers that then get moved to parking lots during the rest of the year to operate, but nothing like the roach coaches or more recent taco trucks of California/NY/DC.
They did away with both in the 80s. We used to get great Mexican food off of a truck in the 70s (which we called the roach coach), and I think Richie Daley shut down the news vendors early on in his reign to great (but quickly forgotten) dismay.
They call them 'gut trucks' here but the food is always fab!
the committee to re-elect Barack Obama CREEBO? Acronym fail. Try this.
No no no….it's Committee to Re-Elect A Muslin (CREAM). Also known as Committee to Re-Elect A Kenyan (CREAK).
Committee to Re-elect a perfect triangulator (CRAPT)
They're suggesting that government should provide happiness now? That's just obscene; good government makes the little people miserable in order to benefit the rich.
But then at least the rich are happy.
Hey, we have the right to PURSUE happiness. Nowhere does it say it must actually be obtainable.
Sadly, I've heard this argument used non-ironically many, many times.
You have made me sad today.
The more I see of these, the more I realize how many bored and/or artistically frustrated people work in the Foreign Service. I guess it is pretty disillusioning, after you put in years to get an FSO appointment, to realize you are stuck reporting on restaurant openings in Caracas, rather than having John LeCarre spy sexcapades.
I also am getting the feeling that Wonketteers would fit right in with the current crop of embassy types – snarky and creative all at once. Although I have yet to see a reference to buttseks or the Chilean equivalent of TruckNutz.
We would be likely to confuse Simon Bolivar with Simon and Garfunkel.
Not just restaurants, but shitty government-run restaurants. Could you imagine just how awful a Big Mac would be if the government owned McDonalds? (Well, probably no worse than they are now, come to think of it, so that was a poor example.)
I'm guessing the taco shacks and Dairy Queens in the neighborhood are none too pleased with this new dose of 'easier to swallow socialism' in Venezuela. Having the government run the price of basic goods down to an artificially low level just runs all the taxpayers' businesses out of business. I think the Soviet Union had a little trouble with this and ended up rethinking the whole deal. China bagged it in all but name years ago, and Cuba works around it as best they can with a thriving black market.
I'm all for government being in charge of providing roads, schools, health insurance, public utilities and law enforcement, but keep them the hell away from my steaks and pizza.
I kinda like the India approach, where certain foods are deemed necessities and price controlled but not the rest of it. Sort of like WIC but with no eligibility requirements. Of course, in that case it is a tiny band-aid on a choking chest hole of poverty, but I think it might be better than the wide-spread agri-business subsidies we have now.
Anyone who's ever attempted to eat an AFEES¹ Burger would refudiate your baseless assertion that government could not make a worse burger than McDonalds. They can, and they do, every day, in that worker's paradise, the United States Military²
____________
¹Army-Air Force Exchange Service
² Government owned housing, roads, factories, buildings, stores, etc.
Being stationed at Eielson AFB, AK in the early 80's, I can attest to this finding. I'm still passing the base bowling alley's signature ArcticBurger.
Well yeah but its all better now cuz Ronnie and the Wonderbushes outsourced all that noncombat stuff. Whoooh free market rulz!
Buttseks.
Yeah. Years go by. One day you wake up in some shithole foreign outpost and you look down at your flour sack of a stomach blocking the view to a dick that no one wants anymore and you shake you head head and mutter, "I coulda been a contender. I coulda had class. I coulda been somebody. But, no, instead I took the FSO exam." By then, it's too late, ya big chump. A coupla more years, and you can be sailing that little fiberglass boat around Chesapeake Bay and retelling a bunch of other boozy losers the story about the time down in Caracas when you ate a Hugo Chavez arepa. And pretty soon, after that, it's the big dirt nap and a one-inch mention in your alumni mag.
Next time I stop to fill up my Skoda at a Venezuela/Vuvuzela-state-owned Citgo, I will demand my cheap and delicious arepas! I want to eat AND get gas!
Oh you'll get gas. Trust me.
SOCIALISTS! arep-whatevers should be served with mt. dew (juice? eww!) and from a truck like how we do it in merka.
i live in europe – soshi-ialism is great. free govt health care for all!
if i had been dumb enough to stay in USA, i'd prob. still be working at the US Census Bureau, counting numbers, etc.
europe is better than that, definitely.
They seem to get a lot more time away from work, too.
Really, there's never a day that goes by where I don't realize just how lucky I am to have a job where I've had no cost of living increase in wages in 5 years and where I will likely be facing a pay cut this year – even as I'm rolling out of my warm bed at 5 AM to face another tedious day.
*Cue Lee Greenwood.
Ain't deflation grand? And yet Beck and similar idiots keep warning of the imaginary threat of hyperinflation.
Could you stop the shit about "if I had been dumb enough to stay in USA", already? The only thing worse than an American is an expat. Fuck, man.
Yeah, good luck with your veil bans, minaret bans, austerity riots, regular riots, dozens to hundreds of people dying from a simple snow storm/heat wave, etc…
yeah but we all get 6-8 wks vacation every year, plus that nice
fat socialist medicine plan that americans can only dream about. the promised land? it ain't the USA anymore.
the reason we have it better here? the politicians don't rant and rave about Jeebus during election campaigns. they stick to
economics, facts, etc.
Meh³
Maybe Barry could bring Tommy Monaghan on board and open a gubberment soup kitchen. Maybe Dominoz & Biscuits say on the ever festive DuPont Circle in da District. The hungry could sing the Vatican Rag while engorging vast quantities of subsidized ADM high fructose corn syrup along with
Bisquickbiscuits 'n gravy. Mmmmmmm good!Applebee's deep fries those arepas, puts them in a high-fructose corn syrup glaze, and triples the portion size. So fuck Hugo Chavez, and fuck his brother Cesar. USA! USA!
Soon, Lindsey Graham will take to the Senate floor and decry the librul soshulist plot to take away his ham biscuits and replace them with ham arepas.
Feeding the poor. That ain't right. Everybody knows the right only feeds themselves. The poor is going to get gutter water and day old Big Macs from dumpsters.
Sadly, many in America today would be thankful for a discarded Big Mac, BUT, TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH!
We're at that stage of development where free insulin would be more popular than cheap food. Of course, if Michelle Obama would teach Americans to cook a half-dozen decent meals (which many people are shockingly incapable of doing) neither would be necessary.
You mean to tell me that Wal-Mart's "Take and Bake" Lotsa Meatsa pizzas washed down with leftover Bloomin' Onions and gallons of Hi-C don't constitute a well-balanced meal? HERESY.
Mmmm…water sugary drinks. They're better when they're fizzy, though, although not as good as they used to before they took the cocaine out of Coca-Cola™.
Rachel Ray for FLOTUS!
Latin American socialism = Arepas = corn-meal sandwiches = polenta = European socialism
Isn't that a little like what the Socialist Obama wanted to, only instead of those eating places he wanted the government to run health insurance companies. Couldn't get the people to swallow it. Try the injectable solution next time.
Shoulda tried it on a sugar cube. worked for both Salk and Leary!
This will never work. If the poor are not starving why would they want to get jobs cleaning up after the rich?
No kidding. We'll never be able to compete globally. Other countries have way more starving poors. We have to catch up!
Probably not Berkeley – Cal types like our Messican authentic more than message driven (Gordo Taqueria, for example, is considered the food of the Gods). Now, a performance art piece involving arepas soaked in cheap venezuelan gas and/or urine, being chewed up and then spit out by a woman wearing only American Flag themed body paint onto the whipped and bleeding back of a migrant farm worker – the community would be all over that.
Not sure what happened to my comment.. Something about the translation of “Arepera Socialista” being "Socialist Tortilla" and doing well in our favorite socialist college towns.. Gordo Taqueria isn't that just Fat Taco Store? Looks good though!
That would be the translation, but when said in the right company it is a Pavlovian signal for blissing out in reminiscence of food comas past.
(Note: “Arepas” are a Venezualan-style thick cornmeal tortilla usually
used for a type of sandwich. End Note.)
Note: It's called a taco. End Note.
Or a chapati.
Colombian Arepa are about an inch thick, so thicker than chapatis or taco. The texture was very coarse, I can only describe chewing on them as being like trying to eat wool.
"Eating wool" used to describe another activity, but now all the girls shave down there.
Ahem. Xtine O'Donnell?
My condolences to the professionals of the Foreign Service: you spent all that money and time to get the advanced degree, and here you are pushing cookies and writing bored, listless cables on Venezuela's state-run answer to Taco John's. And I know you're reading this, because you're bored at work and where else would you go?
“Making Socialism Easier to Swallow.”
Is this was the wingtards meant when they were all braying that mild reforms on a for-profit healthcare system were "rammed down
The American People's ™ throats?
A spoonful of sugar, asswads, a spoonful of sugar.
Yeah, what is it with all the oral references?
I don't want to make it easier to swallow. How can I be as forceful when I cram it down their throats?
The right has never evolved from the infantile oral/anal fixations.
Oh I think you know what all that ramming down the throat stuff is about: wishful thinking.
If that were true they would also be insisting on ramming stuff up our arse, you know how the Right loves the buttsex.
This is a Wikileak? Absolute fail as a top secret document. So now we know the Venezuelans make good tacos? Not sure I could've survived without that goldmine of info.
This must be evidence of the blood on Julian Assange's hands that Sarah Palin spoke about
Now the terrorists know where to strike.
Make sure you order the pork arepas, just to be safe.
I call bullshit.
If it can't be mass-produced in blorps made solely of high-fructose corn syrup, how can it possibly be 'food'?
Should have been: “Making Socialism Easier to Swallow by wrapping it in a delicious, nutritious and heavily discounted Arepa.”
However easy socialism is made to swallow, most of the American people are still prudes who will only spit.
You know who else had a serious culinary jonesing for arepas?
Che Guevara?
Needs moar Cholula.
Excellent travel tip for the Venezuela bound! Hillary should make "the State Dept. recommends" a regular feature. Perhaps the CIA could recommend the best kim chi in Pyongyang.
It'd put those Zagat's bastards out of business.
Keep yer gubmint hands off mah restrant reviews!
Is it me or are these "leaks" are seriously getting more are more retarded/irrelevant by the hour? It's almost like all the half-decent docs already came out and these are just the leftovers.
Just biding our time until the really good stuff (BoA) comes out.
At which point all ATMs will seize up, banks will close, stock market will plunge, blah blah…
Yeah, like when they re-release an old album and include a bunch of tracks "not previously released." Hey, they're outtakes and weren't of sufficient quality to make the cut originally, doubt if they've improved over time, and you are just milking the suckers.
Track 43: State Department Revelations (Extended Dance Remix)
leftover arepas are best the next day, yum!
But what if he has discovered a method in the jungles of South (Fake) America to make voters like socialism? This proves Obama is morally weak.
I see what you did there, Jackie. I approve.
When Assange tried to introduce the Easy to Swallow technique with his Swedish companions, all his trouble begun.
Wait, I'm a little confused. When the diplomat said the cheap, tasty arepas are making socialism a little "easier to swallow" was that an intentional pun? Are puns now encouraged in State Department? This would be first evidence of the tea-bagger claim that Obama's liberalism really is going too far.
Also this is claim crap. When I lived in Caracas, the highlight of everyone's Sunday was packing the entire clan into the Trabant and headin' on down to the Wendy's as soon as Mass let out. Seriously. The line would be backed up to the next block if your abuelita dragged her feet on the way out the door.
Even good socialists love their chicken part nuggets™ and Frostie cups o' corn syrup®.
Stop it, you're making me hungry.
norteamericanos son tan estupidos a veces, verdad?
The government restaurant produces arepas that are excellent and cheap.
So what?
I want to know if they are halal or haraam?
Needs more Amigos Invisibles.
Let's get funky. On a spaceship. AREPA 3000: A Venezuelan Space Odyssey.
Because he didn't eat pineapple first.
Face it, since Chavez refuses to toss the MegaCorps salad, he will badmouthed from now on and accused of everything they can throw at him, including being behind the grassy knoll with a Hi-Powered Rifle. How dare he attempt to run his Country as he see's fit! Who does he think he is? Oh, right.
Oh, and don't forget that Hugo already has survived at least one US-sponsored coup.
So fucking sad, we can't even overthrow weak South American Governments any more. How humiliating!
Well he deserves it since he's an evil dictator!
…wait he was democratically elected? Huh. Then why does the media keep referring to him as a dictator when that is just not true?
Memo from Roger Ailes: The preferred terminology for "democratically elected President of Venezuela" is "socialist dictator." If the preferred terminology cannot be used, the term "Obama supporter" may be substituted.
I think it has to do with the 10 cent a gallon gas in Venezuela.
Yes, and the interesting thing is, the state sells it AT COST!
Selling gasoline at $0.10/gallon equates roughly to $4.20/bbl of oil.
The going world market rate is about 20 times that.
For the same reason they refer to Kuwait, Egypt and the rest of our Colonies as Democracies. Plus, they think we're ALL fucking morons.
Life is change, but this is ridiculous.
I would follow Che into the Bolivian mountains for free arepas, coffee, and jugo naturales (although I'm more partial to Colombian ones, and that country is a Republican's wet dream: war all the time and, most recently, a privatization of social security – maybe this is why the FARC has been holding out for so long? No arepa offers?)
On a January 8 visit, EmbOffs witnessed a long line of people
EmbOffs? Standards at the State Department have really gone to hell under the new affirmative action program. In my day the EmbOffs stayed in the damned typing pool where they belonged, not wandering around making reports on restaurants.
Ive got your "cable from Caracas" right here!
heyooh
Thank you Gov. Sanford!
I am very hungry and would really like one of those socialist tacos. I think Hugo is sure win the propaganda war by setting up a chain of socialised taco outlets in the flyover states.
We already know how to do socialism:
Socialism Security
Pubic Education to teach the dirty poor folks not to steal your fucking 50 inch plasma or key your lexus
Rural socialist farm Subsidies for the God fearing anti-urbans
Rotten meat regulations
Health care, food, clothing, housing for the troops who love their country enough to defend it without having the government pay for all that shit!
National parks where tree huggin anti oil drilling endangered aminals can relax like welfare queens
Government cheeze whiz
No pay toilets, etc
Fuck I've been over this a thousand times with you teabaggers when are you going to admit you are socialist as your president? I AM talking to teabaggers right?
I wish Obama would build a cheap arepa joint to replace an Applebee's. Because Applebee's sucks.
I can't get over the fact that there was no difference between the Arepera Socialista restaurant and any other restaurant in Caracas. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by socialists, primarily socialist patronship. There wasn't one person in the restaurant who was screaming, "Comrade M-Fer, I want more juice."
Thank the Goddess that Jeane Kirkpatrick is six feet under, growing mushrooms out of her crack.
Bolivar: “The best system of government is that which produces the greatest happiness.”
I am going to write that down immediately and then flush it.
No wonder Bolivar got only some shit poor country, Bolivaria, named after him. Jerk.
As we have learned, the best system of government is that which taxes the rich least, if at all.
Yeah, but the commies don't have a Spanish-speaking chihuahua or a monkey riding on the back of a border collie.
¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!
Can we pay the same prices for gas that they do in Venezuela?
And miss a chance to support fine corporate citizens like BP, Exxon and Shell? Hardly. I think you owe the oil companies an apology for even thinking that. If we take away their quarterly multi-billion dollar profits, they will stop doing all that hiring they are doing….
I love the poster. I wonder what the Baggers would do if they ever experienced real central planning. Lets see… a six pack a month of Coors Light should see folks through the year. And that Daytona 500… at 25MPG, the racers should be able to get by with 20 gallons of gas but, what the heck, in the name of Sport we'll give them a couple extra gallons.
Where's a good gulag when you need one.
"This proves Obama is morally weak." is the new "This is good news for John McCain."
But CAPRI SUN comes in pouches, not boxes!
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