As I keep saying, in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is moving to socialist authoritarianism and his cozying up to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is becoming more and more threatening to our national security interests.
This past week the Iranian president went to Latin America to meet with the leftist governments. His first stop was in Caracas to embrace Chavez, Cindy Sheehan’s favorite Latin president.(If you heard Sheehan being interviewed by a friendly and polite Sean Hannity recently you had to walk away believing she was not given a full deck of playing cards. I had never heard her speak more than a few practiced polemical lines in the past. Her performance on Hannity’s radio show was pathetic. She came over as dull-normal in brainpower, at best.)
The next day the President of Iran was hugging the old communist boss, and newly elected Jefe, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Then he was off to the swearing-in of the new Ecuadorian president, a disciple of Chavez named Rafael Correa.
The visit to Chavez in Venezuela was the second time Ahmadinejad has been in Caracas in the last few months.
Chavez called the Iranian president “My brother” and he announced a joint $2 billion dollar program for unspecified “development and projects”.
Chavez is working to minimize and then eliminate any political opposition.
He began a second six-year term saying he plans to forget about another presidential election, and just continue on at the helm, perhaps for the rest of his life.
Chavez’ hero and mentor is Cuban dictator and “President for Life” himself, Fidel Castro, who is 80 years old, and now seems to be dying, as his brother Raoul scrambles to maintain control through the military, over the country and its economy. The fact that Raoul is a notorious transvestite is interfering with his credibility in what is still a sexually rigid society. (Not that there is anything wrong with running around in high heels and a dress as a man!)
Fidel Castro is reportedly dying not from cancer, but from infections related to diverticulitus. He has had three serious operations, and all of them have failed.
With all the propaganda over the years about Cuba’s “free, excellent medical care” you should note that they had to send a doctor from Spain to take care of Castro –the Cuban doctors were all “free” but apparently not “excellent” enough. The great irony is that micromanager Castro who runs the country by whatever whim comes to him may have made a grievous error. The doctors told him they had to perform a colostomy and could cure him with that. He refused and ordered them to sew up his colon. He didn’t want the bag. Big mistake. Fecal material has permeated his abdomen and is killing him with an infection they can’t stop.
Castro’s boy Chavez has been in office since 1999 and was just re-elected, now maybe for life.
Venezuela is the fourth-largest oil exporter to the US.
Funny, you’ll remember there was a recall referendum against Chavez a few years ago that was marred by deep irregularities. But it was “cleared” by the relentlessly meddlesome Jimmy Carter –(one of our worst failed presidents) who “certified” the effort as fair even though the European Union, of all outfits, refused to be an observer because Chavez’ efforts against the referendum were so “anti-democratic.” Now look what we have got staring at us from the South, and I don’t mean Alabama.
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