Comments board goes insane in five... four... three...
So, guess who puts food on the Palin family table?
If you're Venezuelan, you do!
How does that work out? As with Kevin Tocineta, there are six degrees of separation:
1) Sarah Palin's husband, Todd, is a snow-mobile racer.
2) He participates in a snow-mobile race called the Iron Dog.
3) Todd Palin's team is sponsored by Mystik Lubricants, as you can see in the picture -
4) Mystik Lubricants is owned by ... (you probably suspect where this is going by now) ... CITGO!
5) Citgo is owned by Hugo Chávez.
6) Chávez es el pueblo.
Ergo, you pay for Sarah Palin's groceries.
This is the kind of story the blogosphere was created to spread!
Mudflats is calling it Sarah's Socialist Snow Machine. Palingates says Sarah is "palling around with Communists." Andrew Sullivan, of course, had to give up a link.
Personally, this seems like a silly, inconsequential little news item to me, but Quico talked me into posting about it because...well, because Sarah is a traffic magnet for blogs!
Let's see if that holds true.
Kepler
Francisco Toro
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Why you should run posts about Alaska by an actual Alaskan
The Iditorad is a dog-sled race. So it is more likely powered by Purina than by Citgo.
A small problem
Your degrees of separation are faulty - the Iditarod is a dogsled race. The snowmobile race is called the Iron Dog. That makes #2 wrong, and #3 mostly irrelevant - except for the fact the the Mystik logo is featured very prominently on the snowmobile behind here in that video.
So the line from Chavez to Sarah Palin personally is a bit muddled, though your original line about Venezuelans putting food on the Palin table is fitting, and excellent. The oil subsisides aren't just going to poor residents of left-leaning U.S. districts any more.
I'm a fan of this picture http://www.themudflats.net/wp-content/uploads/hugo.JPG - but they should edit it to say, "Go Palin!" :)
AIO
Gah!...we've corrected the race name now...
sorry about that...
There it is
A nice, sequential series now. Thanks for changing it. Still, it is very funny to see Mystik so prominently behind her. I'm sure she was just displaying her husband's snowmobile, but it looks awful close to intentional product placement, which would be mighty ironic - from either side of the equation.
On the Sean Penn idiocy (below), I like the responses in the article. I certainly can't improve on those. "That is utterly un-American," and, "In light of his ignorance of freedom of speech, his wishing rectal cancer on his detractors, and his embracing tyrants, Mr. Penn obviously prefers thuggery to democracy." Beautiful.
Iron dogs and Palinsanity
emigdio, I was wondering what you were going to do with this info. Great stuff.
blackton
In other non-news...
And in other non-news-but-with-great-potential-for-comedy, award-winning actor and professional asshat Sean Penn says that anyone who calls Hugo the First a "dictator" should go to jail.
Heating Oil to Rural Alaska Villages
Sarah Palin was also unable to assist rural Alaskans with the high costs of heating oil. So Citgo through Citizens Energy Corp., a non-profit supported by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., supplied free oil. Here is a link to a thank you note:
http://aitc.org/?q=node/240
"Thanking CITGO, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and the Citizens Energy Corporation for gifting 100 gallons of heating oil to each family in hundreds of villages, towns and communities throughout Alaska"
the least they could have done
... is published the thank you note in Spanish and in Venezuelan newspapers. After all, Maigualida in Petare would sure like to know that Alaskans are grateful to her for subsidizing their oil consumption while she, on the other hand, has no running water.
Nice try Juan, but, as usual,
Nice try Juan, but, as usual, this is all nonsense.
If CITGO has given money to Palin's husband's team, this was done as a form of advertising, which all companies do as a way to generate increased revenue.
So, Maigualida in Petare can actually thank CITGO for increasing their revenue by advertising and selling more lubricants to the North American market, and therfore giving the Venezuelan government more funds to spend on basic necessities in Petare.
This was hardly the case before Chavez, when CITGO did not remit its earnings back to the Venezuelan government.
Try again. And try not be such a blatant political hack.
You know what would be great political advertising?
Giving away free gasoline to everyone in the US. And giving away all of Citgo's income (income, not earnings, but income) to the poor neighborhoods of Houston, where Citgo is headquartered.
After all, it's all justified in the name of advertising, right? I mean, that would totally increase their revenue! Just like the free handouts to Alaskan villagers did.
Oh, and since I'm the hack and you obviously are not, show me where and how you calculated the elasticity of demand, and where you proved that increasing advertising spending by giving away free heating oil actually increased revenues. I mean, that's the least a "non-hack" like yourself would do - have solid evidence that advertising expenditures increased revenues. I hope you took care of the endogeneity of advertising and sales, because it's a well known problem in statistics.
Asshole.
CITGO does not lose income with heating oil program
CITGO's program for supplying heating oil to the poor in the US is simple. It is direct. No middle men. Hence it is 40% cheaper to the end consumer. CITGO still gets its income and does not lose revenue.
I am surprised that the same misleading stuff on the heating oil program is still being published by JC who KNOWS this to be false.
CITGO has an advertising and promotion budget as do all corporations. It chooses to spend it in Alaska. So what? Advertising does not always result in increased sales but an enhanced public image.
John (Evers)
So giving oil away for free doesn't cost anything?
Ah ha! So your argument is that if you cut out the intermediaries, giving away oil for free doesn't cost Venezuelan anything. Brilliant! You gotta wonder why CITGO manages to charge people for gas in the first place! Just cut out the middleman and giving the stuff away becomes free!
Sigh...we use to have a higher class of troll around here. What ever happen to Rubén Castañeda anyway?
Low blows, and illogical assertions
Lower class than Rubén Castañeda? Now that's just downright mean. :)
But that said, John, the issue here is NOT why CITGO would be advertising, but why CITGO is advertising by putting money in Sarah Palin's husband's pocket. I have to assume there were some other teams out there they might have chosen, since otherwise there isn't really a race.
And cutting out a middle man won't automatically result in any savings at all. Middle men get paid for providing some kind of service (except in cases of pure corruption - if that's what you are implying here, by all means say so!) in exchange for the money, and cutting that service means someone else, CITGO in this case, is assuming those responsibilities. Could be delivery, dealing with red tape, all kinds of things, but taking on those responsibilities requires costs. In those examples it could be buying a delivery truck (if they contract one, that's a middle man!), hiring new personnel, things that take actual money. And here's the kicker - sometimes those middle men are specialists, and they can do the service more efficiently that the company that wants the service done. So having middle men, even if it costs 40% (a figure you no doubt pulled out of your ass), can quite possibly save money. (Or are you suggesting that all those capitalists outsource - I'm not talking about offshoring - and subcontract as some sort of generous, corporate welfare plan, giving away money just to create jobs?)
Plus, as admin (Quico?) notes, cutting out middle men and giving away oil aren't at all the same thing. But if I'm having to explain the irony of Chavez supporting Palin, then I'm hardly surprised you didn't get that one.
"Try again. And try not be such a blatant political hack." Wise words.
AIO
Thanks for sharing nice
Thanks for sharing nice information with us. i like your post and all you share with us is uptodate and quite informative, i would like to bookmark the page so i can come here again to read you, as you have done a wonderful job.
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Thanks for sharing nice
Thanks for sharing nice information with us. i like your post and all you share with us is uptodate and quite informative, i would like to bookmark the page so i can come here again to read you, as you have done a wonderful job.
Travel Tips | Travel Insurance | Travel Packages
it looks like that thing
it looks like that thing needs lock pick tools to drive. go sarah.