Joe for Oil

Joe Kennedy II, one son of Robert Kennedy, has been running ads on local television touting his and the recently departed Hugo Chavez’s generosity in providing heating oil for the poor people in Boston.  (As it turns out, this generosity is limited to 100 gallons of free oil per household … if you can get his company on the phone … and then you need to buy the rest of your oil-tank fill-up at normal rates.  See: Breitbart Story).

He has given himself the puffery title “Joe for Oil” and is seen on his TV ads dragging the oil filler hose with some impoverished child … preparing to provide (some) oil to the family of this urchin.  To see part of one of these self-aggrandizing ads go to: YouTube Video

Long ago, I wrote about this Kennedy charlatan (it seems to run in the family) … see: Sow's Ear, but Howie Carr has better scoured “Joe for Oil” in a recent column in the Boston Herald newspaper.  Joe Kennedy takes a salary of almost a million dollars from what he touts as a non-profit company, “Citizens Oil," and his wife pulls down well over $300,000 (for doing what it is not clear).  Basically, Joe Kennedy is running an ancillary for-profit oil trading operation (like Enron) and had gotten cozy with “our friend in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez” I’m reasonably sure to get a good price for the oil he then mostly resells at a nice profit … all the while giving the impression that he is a super do-gooder.  This is despicable behavior and I hope against hope that his unfair price leverage in now diminished as a result of Hugo Chavez’s demise.

Instead of “Joe for Oil,” I think that this Kennedy poppinjay might better be called “Oily Joe.”

Useful Idiots

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is not a friend of the United States. Along with his ties to terrorism, Chavez intends to install Iranian missiles in his country, a scant 1300 miles from the U.S. shore (see Iran missiles). After recent setbacks in National Assembly elections in his country (see recent elections) , Hugo Chavez has made an end run around Venezuela’s rapidly crumbling democratic process and grabbed dictatorial powers (see dictatorial powers). This sulfur-smelling dictator of this oil-rich South American country has gradually amassed power over the last twelve years to the point where now he is unlikely to be legally deposed or even voted out of office.

This gradualism should be an object-lesson for us all on how such loss of freedom comes about … like the proverbial frog in the pot of cold water that is gradually being brought to a boil. Joseph Stalin liked to call those fellow-traveler Westerners who supported him in his reign of terror in Russia as “useful idiots.” Unfortunately, we again have a litany of such brain-dead liberals who worship at the feet of this despotic leader Chavez. The list is predictably extensive but here is a gallery of a few of the most notables:

Danny Glover

Sean Penn

Joe Kennedy II

Kevin Spacey

Cindy Sheehan

Barney Frank

Noam Chomsky

Oliver Stone

Jimmy Carter