Venezuela's Chavez tells Washington "go to hell" - Yahoo! News

If I were looking at this (Venezuela's Chavez tells Washington "go to hell" - Yahoo! News ) in a vacuum, with no concern about context, I would assume that Chavez is a total asshole. Well, it turns out that he is just that, but it is also true that a lot of what he complains about vis-a-vis George Bush is also true. S0, here we have a case of the pot calling the kettle black, and it turns out that they both suffer from overwhelming hubris. To tell you the truth, if I were a Latin American, I would resent how my country and those around me were treated by this administration. I also don't have a lot of problems with taxing the upper classes: they enjoy a much higher standard of living than the rest of their fellow citizens therefore they have a higher responsibility to share the wealth. That's just the way it is. Also I don't have a great deal of problems with Chavez raising the price of gasoline to something a little more in line with its true costs. What I do have problems with is legislation by decree and unlimited presidential re-election. Both of those are the tools of a dictator and not part of a free, democratic society. When push comes to shove, Chavez is not much more than a Banana Republic Dictator of the kind grown throughout Latin America for decades. The only difference between him and the thugs we have supported is that he spouts the Marxist line while our lapdogs paid some sort of lip service to capitalism. I cry for Venezuela and its citizens. Chavez has managed to pack the legislature with his Brown Shirts, so his "reforms" (especially the national police force--read NKVD or Gestapo) are almost a lead pipe cinch to pass. So Venezuela will have themselves a Castro to deal with for the foreseeable future...at least until some group gets the where-with-all to either kill him or stage a successful coup.