Crazy Chavez

Chavez Kalashnikov factory plan stirs fear - Yahoo! News

A definite read, Chavez is really starting to turn insane. He has delusions that the United States wants to invade his country and  is supporting efforts that will bring about problems that will take many years to fix. Morales has fallen for this romantic idea of socialism that will not work. Many of the programs that he is supporting sound good on the surface, but they have huge flaws. Back to the article, I think that a new AK factory is a horrible idea for the stability of the region. They just bought 100,000 AK's for a military that has 87,500 people. Now they are building a factory to make more and the numbers just don't add up. Astute readers will say, "but Joe, what about the 100,000 Armed Reserve Soldiers, don't they need guns?" Yes, those soldiers need guns, but Venezuela already has FN-FAL's and other arms that it had before this deal. Guns just don't "rot" and unless they have been shot alot, there is no reason to not use a gun that is 75 years old. People buy rifles that were put away in grease during WWII to shoot today. As I see it, the AK factory is being built to arm the approximately 2 million reservists and for giving/selling arms to local troublemakers like Morales and the FARC. Once Chavez has his military built up, he will begin to look for ways to use it. The non-substance Bolivian farmers have recently formed militias to defend against Morales plan to take land from the rich to give to the poor. I bet that Venezuelan AK's will be used against them if it comes to an armed struggle. Other nations such as Brazil are getting fed up with Bolivia's antics, and Chavez is promoting these actions. Some of these AK's will end up in Columbia, or the ammunition will. This will be used to keep the drugs flowing to keep the United States distracted. Chavez is pretty smart though. He has that heating oil subsidy for poor americans, and the Venezuelian state-owned oil company owns CITGO. Some of his plan may be to use his new military to keep oil investors on their toes, and make the "Venezuelan premium" even higher. Current light sweet crude prices are trading at a premium to what people would expect it to cost without fears of problems in certain areas of the world (mid-east/south america/hurricanes in the US). Btw, wtf is up with that. If a hurricane occurs, and we lose refining capability, then the world market would have more oil. Then, the supply should increase, and the prices of unrefined oil should go down. The price of gas for our cars would go up, because supply goes down for refined gas in the United States. Does anyone know how much of our refined oil is sold to other countries?  There is uncertainty and fear about what Chavez is planning and what will happen next with Venezuelan oil. This has increased the price of a barrel of oil. Chavez wants to keep it that way, because that gives him money for his military and for wining over the hearts of the poor in Venezuela.

I keep wanting to yell at Morales, but I'll save that for another post.