While the press was busy writing a million stories predicting that President Bush won't be able to tie his shoes now that Karl Rove is leaving something infinitely more disturbing and newsworthy was happening in South America. Lunatic dictator (and new Sean Penn-Pal) Hugo Chavez decided that it's time to change the Venezuelan constitution so he can be elected until whatever god you believe in can remove him from this earth. (The CIA missed a golden opportunity when Chavez was speaking at the UN last year at the same time all of that tainted spinach was floating around. One little salad could've done the trick. Alas, it was chicken nugget day at the UN cafeteria. I believe that's served with tater-tots and a heaping bowl of useless sanctions.)
Hugo Chavez has been very irritated with the U.S. ever since we went into Iraq. Many think that this is because he's staking out some moral high ground because he is opposed to war. Personally, I think that Hugo is fuming because the dictator spotlight was taken off of Saddam Hussein and redirected to his own pudgy mug. True, he would deny that he's actually a dictator but here's one overwhelming piece of evidence: he's been embraced by Sean Penn, Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover. They've all visited Chavez, gotten the same sanitized "Hollywood Tour" that Castro gives in Cuba and marveled at the gestapo glory that's all about the place. Maria Conchita-Alonso, an actress who is actually from Venezuela, thinks Chavez is a "totalitarian." But what would she know, she only has friends and family there.
Wealthy liberals absolutely adore communist dictators. One I know (who shall remain nameless-pretend I'm a reporter with "an unnamed source") once said to me, "I just love what Castro has done with Cuba!" None of the Cuban immigrants I know has echoed that sentiment thus far. Why is it that Lefties can believe whatever a dictator tells them but ignore the little things, like thousands of people risking their lives to float on makeshift rafts to get to Miami? We won't even jump into our pools if the chlorine levels are off, these people are flinging themselves at the mercy of the ocean and the weather to get away from Castro's glory. Just guessing here, but I don't think people kill themselves to get away from paradise. "Oh my god! The health care and education are simply too magnificent, I've got to get out of here!"
What's really scary for those of us who don't have to live under benevolent Chavez regime is that this guy now controls a HUGE chunk of our oil imports. We import twice as much oil from Venezuela as we do from Iraq. Where's that "war for oil" now?
Chavez is also filling the hollowness that Hollywood has felt since Castro became ill. I could almost hear the weeping in Malibu when it looked like Fidel was going to die. He is still too ill for any real good propaganda photo-ops. Just when it looked like Hollywood was about to enter its darkest, dictator-free hours, along came Hugo like a breath of fresh, fascist air to give the Loony Left someone new to spoon with in their political beds.
Just wondering, aren't huge oil exporters disproportionately contributing to greenhouse gas emissions? I guess there is a big carbon-footprint reduction factor if you're a communist dictator.
It's a love story only Hollywood could write.
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