TheDC Morning

TheDC Morning: Hugo’s heist?

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
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1.) Hugo’s heist? — Did Hugo Chavez just steal an election? TheDC’s Matthew Boyle reports:

“According to the Associated Press, Venezuela’s electoral council has declared that Hugo Chavez beat Henriques Capriles in Sunday’s presidential election with about 54 percent of the vote, despite exit polls showing otherwise. Venezuelan Twitter users have claimed Chavez’s victory was wrought with election fraud, and that the socialist incumbent president sent tanks into the streets of his country as those exit poll reports showed him losing. A picture of the tanks surfaced on Twitter Sunday evening. The British Guardian newspaper reported that Chavez also sent troops armed with AK-47s into Venezuela’s streets to fight against any protests in case unrest came as a result of the news.”

It is hard to believe that Chavez would ever turn over power peacefully. It’s too early to say, but it looks like he may have just stolen a country.

2.) Even more sanctions! — Mitt Romney is set to deliver a major foreign policy speech Monday, which will include an innovative Iran plan. TheDC’s Alex Pappas reports:

“Romney will also say that Obama’s ‘hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States’ is ‘not a strategy.’ ‘We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds, when our defense spending is being arbitrarily and deeply cut, when we have no trade agenda to speak of, and the perception of our strategy is not one of partnership, but of passivity,’ Romney will say. When it comes to dealing with Iran, Romney will promise to ‘not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran, and will tighten the sanctions we currently have.’ He will also promise to work with Israel to increase America’s military assistance and coordination.”

Oooooh! He won’t hesitate to put more sanctions on Iran  — or even tighten our current sanctions? Talk about new thinking. Perhaps with this plan on the table, Iran will capitulate before Romney is even inaugurated #sarcasm. It seems like Romney’s Iran policy boils down to: If Israel attacks Iran during a Romney administration, you can be sure the U.S. will stand behind Israel. At least that’s better than what we have under President Obama, where such support is far less certain.

3.) First, Do Not Offend — Now we can fully understand President Obama’s obsession with criticizing the almost entirely unseen anti-Islam YouTube clip that was used as a pretext to attack our embassies in the Middle East. Obama apparently has long been in favor of curbing speech he deems offensive, Charles Johnson reports for TheDC:

“At the height of early-1990s conservative backlash over political correctness and ‘speech codes’ on U.S. college campuses, Barack Obama participated in a panel event geared toward denying that restrictions on free expression were problematic, or happening at all. The 1991 Harvard Law School yearbook quoted the future President of the United States virtually shrugging his shoulders at the thought that non-liberal white students might take offense at restrictions on speech minority students found objectionable. ‘I don’t see a lot of conservatives getting upset if minorities feel silenced,’ Obama said, flipping the argument around.”

4.) Defaming Romney — To date, President Obama’s campaign strategy has been to defame Mitt Romney, opines TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein (ME!):

“Over the summer, Team Obama implemented its ‘Kill Romney’ strategy … If all you were going by were the ads the Obama campaign was running and what their spokespeople were saying, you would come to the conclusion that Romney was a man born with a diamond spoon in his mouth who only got into politics so he could tax the Bejeezus out of the Middle Class, give his rich plutocrat friends tax breaks and legalize dog-fighting. You might imagine that one day while picking out the design for his car garage it just dawned on him: “Honey, why don’t I give up my plush life and get into politics so I can soak the poor.'”

Maybe the strategy was initially successful, but with Wednesday night’s debate in Denver, the strategy is crumbling. With tens of millions of viewers tuning in, Romney didn’t look like the spawn of Satan Team Obama depicted him as.

5.) Today in North Korean News — BREAKING: Kim Jong Un Sends Autographs to Officials and Workers of Various Units

6.) Tweet of Yesterday KimJongNumberUn: Hugo Chavez is holding an election to decide whether he stays in power. Pussy.

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Jamie Weinstein