Hugo Chavez for President in 2008!
In case you missed it, Hugo Chavez delivered a scathing condemnation of our nation's fascist right-wing leadership (YouTube has video with audio in either Spanish or English ) at the United Nations this Wednesday. Farrah Stockman and Rick Klein of The Boston Globe, for instance, reported that "President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela denounced President Bush yesterday as 'the devil himself' and 'a world dictator' in an impassioned speech to the UN General Assembly . . . ." He went on to argue that "[t]he hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species." According to U.S. Representative William D. Delahunt, "For [Chavez] to be able to say that puts into context in what low esteem the United States is held, not just in the Islamic world, but all over."
Al-Jazeera reported that, the next day, Chavez
told those who had flocked to see him at the Olivet Baptist church [in Harlem]: "Bush is an alcoholic, a sick man with a lot of hang-ups." He went on: "Every day I ask God, and the sooner the better, for the American people to elect a president who you can talk with, who you can work with, who you can talk with face-to-face as a brother and see each other as equals. "Not this gentleman who walks like John Wayne." He also said that Bush "doesn't know anything about politics, he got there because of Daddy," referring to Bush's father who was the US president from 1989 to 1993. The crowd lapped up his anti-Bush rhetoric, showing an appreciation that exceeded even the ovation he was given at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.
Given the apparent inability of domestic opposition to offer a bona fide alternative to the American people, some guerrilla poets have decided to encourage Mr. Chavez to run for the presidency of the United States in 2008.
Go, Hugo, go! Gooooo, Hugo go!
If nothing else, he's doing more for the people of the northeast victimized by rising oil prices caused by our government's devious and inept machinations than anyone else, and certainly more than domestic oil & gas companies gouging and defrauding the American public. Just ask one of the tens of thousands of people from the city formerly known as New Orleans who remain homeless over a year after the devastation wrought disaster multiplied by neglect. By the way, Chavez single-handedly turned a Noam Chomsky book into a best-seller, so you can support him in the name of academic freedom even if resistance to unapologetic corporate rapacity doesn't float your proverbial boat.
I am going to go against the grain here. Bush is not facist. A fascist would put the country above all as part of its core identity. Bush has too many policies that favor business above country. He'd be doing more to make us less dependent on other countries and such. I will agree that our current administration has a number of things in common with fascism, but think labeling it as such is somewhat irresponsible, and is more a way to try appealing to people through bogey-man emotional buttons. As for Chavez as president… Are we so lost that we cannot find a leader among us that'd we'd rewrite the constitution to allow a non-native born person presidency. May I remind you CA has a govenor who might love that. –And remember the last actor/govenor that state sent. I am not that familiar with Chavez' domestic policies to comment on his leadership, but its troubling that we so readily turn to another to solve our problems. Chomsky's book a best-seller? No surprise there. The guy is bright, but he comes off as out of touch with, well, everything. Can we get any 'leaders' that don't alienate any one not far left or without college degrees. And he is freaking boring. Seriously. Its ad hominem to be sure, but listening or reading him makes me want to gnaw my leg off to escape the trap.