Presidente Hugo Chavez

Let's talk about Presidente Hugo Chávez. According to reports this evening, he has a twenty-point lead in the election and will win. I have noticed several anti-Chávez articles in the U.S. press, especially that stupid article in the New York Times yesterday claiming that crime has risen during the Chávez administration. The articles all refer to him as a "Leftist," apparently because he likes Fidel Castro. Well, I think Luiz and Leonardo will back me up on this, practically everyone in Latin American likes Castro, or at least they don't hate and fear him, unlike the government of the United States. Why does the U.S. press dislike Chávez? Is it because he called Bush a devil? Hell, I've been calling Bush the devil ever since he was put into the presidency (I liked Chávez's comment that he could still smell the sulfur on the stage; I thought that perhaps that was a reference to Bush's thang for passing gas). The writers of many of the articles I've read about Chávez in the U.S. press over the past few years seem to have been shocked that he would take the profits from oil revenues and use them to help the poor! The nerve of that man; he only does it to gain votes, unlike the Glorious Leader of the United States who cuts the taxes of the wealthy and puts the burden on the middle and lower classes and then hands over the U.S. Treasury to the top 1% of the nation. Now that's Christian leadership! Chávez isn't perfect, but he sure as hell isn't as bad as the current President of the United States; he hasn't invaded any countries, he hasn't supported any coups against other governments, unlike Dubya, who supported the opposition when they tried to evict Chávez. Chávez has supported candidates in the elections of other nations, but he hasn't been entirely successful in that area. Latin America is changing; Chávez, Ortéga, Lula, Correa, Bachelet, Vazquez, and Morales are not the people the Bush administration wanted to see in power, but they were all elected in fair elections, elections which were much cleaner than the elections in which Bush was involved. I think that the U.S. press should spend more time worrying about the problems in the U.S. and those caused by the U.S. instead of worrying about Chávez and Venezuela. When I visit the U.S., I only buy gasoline from Citgo!

UPDATE: No surprise, really, but Chávez won by a landslide, and, from all accounts, it was a clean, fair election.