April 10, 2016

The President of Venezuela — dealing with an energy crisis — urges women to lay off using hairdryers.

He — Nicolas Maduro — says: "I always think a woman looks better when she just runs her fingers through her hair and lets it dry naturally. It's just an idea I have."

44 comments:

Michael K said...

Necessity is the mother of invention. Radical chic is easier when there is no money.

Hagar said...

Good luck with that, Champ!

Gahrie said...

Did he use the word "malaise"?

Fabi said...

All your hair dryers are belong to us.

David Begley said...

Better answer. Get rid of socialism. That country is an oil powerhouse.

Carol said...

My hairdresser tried to get me to do the same thing, but I looked too much like the Affluenza Mom dingbat.

Sebastian said...

Why didn't Bernie think of that?

Wince said...

In many latin countries, hair straightening is an important if racially touchy practice. Included are so-called salon blow-outs.

The Director Of ‘Pelo Malo' (Bad Hair) Talks About Venezuela’s Dangerous Obsession With Beauty

In a beauty obsessed and politically charged Venezuela, director Mariana Rondón made the award-winning film Pelo Malo (Bad Hair), a coming-of-age story about a young boy, Junior, living in the slums of Caracas. Using the racially and gendered topic of hair as a starting point, Rondón’s intimate film addresses much larger topics that currently affect Venezuela — a country with the highest amount of Miss Universe beauty queens and a population living with the idiosyncrasies of its socialist revolution, while its capital city is rated amongst the world’s most violent...

The term ‘pelo malo’ or ‘bad hair’ in Venezuela and the Caribbean is a commonly used expression referring to Afro-Latino hair. It’s also true that in Venezuela we are so mixed that people can be white with ‘bad hair’. It’s no longer specific to people of color but hair remains a serious business in Venezuela.

“I think the second most successful business in Venezuela after the oil industry is hair straightening.” You always see products advertised with magical methods to straighten our hair — there’s hair Botox, plastic surgery for hair, all trying to sell a way to straighten our hair. And you notice how everyone on the street tries to have straight hair. So for me starting with hair was a way to start talking about our identity as a society, as a race, as a context and as a way to construct one’s own identity.

Mary Beth said...

His suggestion would go over better if he looked more like Justin Trudeau.

Birkel said...

Well played, Mary Beth.

John Althouse Cohen said...

Does Venezuela have a towel shortage too?

AllenS said...

Does Venezuela have more than one choice of deodorant?

cubanbob said...

Give Sanders and the Democrats the power to implement their economic policies and we will become Venezuela.

Birkel said...

John Althouse Cohen:

If towel was an autocorrect error for toilet paper, then yes.

If towel was correctly typed, give the socialists time and the answer will be yes.

Rusty said...

John Althouse Cohen said...
Does Venezuela have a towel shortage too?
The hilarity of socialism. The currency is so inflated as to be worthless. You can wipe your ass with it. However you can trade toilet paper for other valuable commodities.
This, from he country with the largest oil reserves in the western hemisphere. They now buy petroleum products from the United States.
Feel the Bern.

Floris said...

Socialism always ends the same way.

"This time will be different. Plus, you don't need all that stuff anyway."

Which is it?

Comanche Voter said...

Not only does Venezuela not have enough electricity to power women's hairdryers, it doesn't have enough electricity to power Fridays. Yup, the government of Venezuela has declared that Fridays will now be national holidays--to save electricity.

Reminds me of the time that my local idiot rag--the Los Angeles Times--was suggesting that people who were laid off in the first year or so of the Obama recession should enjoy their "funemployment". Somehow the folks without a job here in Los Angeles didn't get much solace from the Times suggestion. The good news is that karma does come around, and there have subsequent massive layoffs for the Times newsroom staff. Maybe they can take their "funemploymnet" expertise down to Caracas and help the Venezuelan government. The pay is not so much, but the work week is short.

Browndog said...

This post tries to make light of what is happening in Venezuela. Let's all laugh at the notion of women running their fingers through their hair, while the media totally ignores what socialism has brought to this once affluent country.

One quick Google search and you can see an man arrested for smuggling diapers into the country for his family.

Or, other funny stuff like this:

CARACAS

Like many 16-year-olds, Yannilay Liendo spends the better part of her day glued to Facebook. However, unlike her peers, she’s not using the social media site to connect with friends or catch up on gossip — she’s trying to find diapers and formula for her baby.

eric said...

It would have worked this time if it weren't for bad luck. The US is different. It'll work in the US.

jr565 said...

And enviros, including the pope have told us we should lay off using air conditioners.
So, for people using dryers and/or air conditioners, how much are you willing to give up to cure the world of its environmental illness. If you don't use air conditioners or dryers for a year will it make one bit of difference?
I didnt think so.
But you will still be inconvenienced with the inability to use modernity to make your life easier. Enjoy that.
as to venezuela, this is what happens when socialists run the country. on top of this, its an oil rich country. You'd THINK that they'd at least have oil enough to allow people to run dryers. But, no. Lets export this system to the US.

jr565 said...

"Does Venezuela have a towel shortage too?"

i've seen pictures of store shelves in venezuela. They are completely bare. So my guess is they have a towel shortage, a soap shortage, a food shortage. Anytyhing that can be put on a shelf to buy they have a shortage on.

Jim said...

I'll bet Venezuela doesn't have too many brands of deodorant. Bernie would love it.

Drago said...

jr565: "i've seen pictures of store shelves in venezuela. They are completely bare. So my guess is they have a towel shortage, a soap shortage, a food shortage. Anytyhing that can be put on a shelf to buy they have a shortage on."

It is unfair to judge the "merits" of leftism by any of it's actual results.

Probably racist as well.

Browndog said...

Maria, 24, a reseller who asked for anonymity because re-selling is illegal, said stores in her neighborhood of central Caracas are adapting to the new buying habits by offering baskets of random bundled goods at a fixed price designed to be swapped on the secondary market.

José Goméz, a 57-year-old public accountant, said it had been five days since he could find sugar or coffee.

“In my house we don’t even know what a bean looks like anymore,” he said. “It’s been eight months since I’ve been able to buy deodorant.”


-Miami Herold

buwaya said...

California is on its way there, as far as energy goes.
Though perhaps the presence of less insane US states means that there will always be someone from which to purchase electricity, if all else fails, and it will.

tim in vermont said...

“It’s been eight months since I’ve been able to buy deodorant.”

Bernie says she had too many choices before and this is better.

n.n said...

Natural born beauty. I like it.

John Henry said...

Is this why debbie Wasserman Shultz looks the way she does?

Jason said...

If only they had thought to inflate their tires a little more like Obama told them to.

John Henry said...

Blogger Comanche Voter said...
Not only does Venezuela not have enough electricity to power women's hairdryers, it doesn't have enough electricity to power Fridays. Yup, the government of Venezuela has declared that Fridays will now be national holidays--to save electricity.


the problem is that even if Friday is not a workday, people will be consuming energy anyway. What they need to do is eliminate Friday altogether. Lunes, Martes, Miercoles, Jueves, Sabado, Domingo, Lunes and so on.

Would this be any nuttier than changing their time zone to be 30 minutes different from almost all others?

Now that I think of it, some people might remember that there used to be a Viernes. Change the names of the week to Hugo, Fidel, Karl, Vladimir, Che, Pol. Perhaps nobody would even notice there were now only 6 days.

John Henry

John Henry said...

the real problem is the people. Too many people are mentally ill and just cannot accept socialism. The first step is to try to educate them. that always fails so the logical next step is to get rid of those who do not socialist in their heart. If you can't build the "New Soviet Man", just murder everyone who is not.

This is why mass murder is pretty much a given in every single country that has seriously tried to implement socialism: Russia, Germany, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia and more.

Lenin said you can't have socialism without breaking eggs. That was a euphemism. What he meant was you can't have socialism without mass murder.

Sometimes it is more direct in the form of a gas chamber, bullet, gulag or worse. Other times it is simply starving people as in Russia, Ukraine, China and now, shortly, Venezuela.

Socialism always ends in murder.

John Henry

mikee said...

Hey, just like Russia wasn't really an example of Marxism or Communism, because it followed Lenin/Stalin, Venezuela isn't really socialist, because it followed Chavez/Maduro, not "true" socialism.

When Bernie gets elected, I'm sure we will get Sandersismo, not true socialism. And if instead Hillary avoids jail and is elected, we'll get nuclear war, not true socialism. See? Feel better now?

Alex said...

This is the socialist paradise "Feel The Bern" supporters want to take us to. All in the name of 'selflessness' and 'caring'.

gadfly said...

The drought first hit just after dictator Hugo Chavez died in March of 2013, so I suppose that the oil rich nation's new political organization was too busy sucking up new-found wealth to contract for oil-powered steam turbine facilities to provide backup generation that could have forestalled the current crises. I would guess that the needed machinery is sitting in a warehouse in the United States awaiting a contract buyer.

Meanwhile American experts are helping the ChiComs to build a Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) in China. Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee actually built a molten salt thorium reactor in the 1960s. It was shelved by the Nixon Administration because the Pentagon needed plutonium residue from uranium to build nuclear weapons and thus the imperatives of the Cold War prevailed. Oak Ridge scientists are now working with the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) on the Chinese design.

I see that GE has expanded its Distributive Power business into Latin America and I would guess that bunches of smaller generators is better than no generators.

Distributed Power is all about creating local power using local fuels for faster, flexible, scalable and secure power generation. GE's aero-derivative gas turbines and Waukesha and Jenbacher gas engines can be installed in weeks and generate power in as little as five minutes. GE's on-site power generation solutions will enable industries to take the pressure off the national grids, freeing more power for meeting peak load requirements. They also reduce energy losses from transmission and distribution, thus delivering both economic and environmental benefits."

cubanbob said...

Once again Venezuela is proof that the only good Socialist/Communist is a dead one. If a country with the oil and mineral reserves and farmland of Venezuela can't make it work how stupid must someone be to continue to believe that murderous toxic idiocy can ever be made to work?

Rick said...

jr565 said...
Anything that can be put on a shelf to buy they have a shortage on.


I bet the stores Maduro shops in are stocked. If everyone else was a good a shopper as he they would be fine.

walter said...

Maduro needs to suggest toilet paper is overused.."Just an idea I have"
Socialist shit doesn't stink.

walter said...

Blogger Alex said...
This is the socialist paradise "Feel The Bern" supporters want to take us to. All in the name of 'selflessness' and 'caring'.
--
Well..the Berners usually focus on kinder, gentler versions of "Democratic Socialism in Northern Europe...typically ignoring the large role oil has played in keeping them afloat.

Humperdink said...

As many have said up thread, converting fossil fuels to electricity has been done for a long time. As an small-time oil and natural gas producer, I do it myself. Venezuela is fossil fuel rich. And clueless.

The one thing that seems to ring true with socialists is that none have any experience in the business world. So when a drought occurs, there are no contingency plans. Every thing is reactive. And socialists don't react well - they point fingers.

Not to worry though, it will be different with Bernie.

Birkel said...

walter:

Also ignoring that the average European makes less than the average Mississippian.

Bob Loblaw said...

Did he use the word "malaise"?

Fortunately Venezuela has a relatively pleasant climate, so there's no need to break out the sweaters.

glenn said...

If the chicks are hot I'll run my fingers through their hair. And just to prove I'm a good socialist I'll toss in a back rub.

exhelodrvr1 said...

They need government-paid for pre-K there. That will fix everything!

Peter said...

As if there's a huge mystery about what happens when stores are forbidden to charge more than $4. for an item that costs the store $5.

Although I'm a little surprised that Pres. Obama hasn't brought back Woodrow Wilson's sheep as an alternative to using fossil fuels to mow the White House lawn.