Chavez was still the best and least corrupt leader Venezuela ever had.

[Link: en.wikipedia.org…]

[T]hugo may have been an improvement over others, but he had little use for the rule of law and had no problem expropriating private property to further his socialist aims.

Chris Hitchens had this to say about him and his conspiratorial and downright odd worldview:

In the fall of 2008, I went to Venezuela as a guest of Sean Penn’s, whose friendship with Chávez is warm. The third member of our party was the excellent historian Douglas Brinkley, and we spent some quality time flying around the country on Chávez’s presidential jet and bouncing with him from rally to rally at ground level, as well. The boss loves to talk and has clocked up speeches of Castro-like length. Bolívar is the theme of which he never tires. His early uniformed movement of mutineers—which failed to bring off a military coup in 1992—was named for Bolívar. Turning belatedly but successfully to electoral politics, he called his followers the Bolivarian Movement. Since he became president, the country’s official name has been the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. (Chávez must sometimes wish that he had been born in Bolivia in the first place.) At Cabinet meetings, he has been known to leave an empty chair, in case the shade of Bolívar might choose to attend the otherwise rather Chávez-dominated proceedings.

It did not take long for this hero-obsession to disclose itself in bizarre forms. One evening, as we were jetting through the skies, Brinkley mildly asked whether Chávez’s large purchases of Russian warships might not be interpreted by Washington as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The boss’s response was impressively immediate. He did not know for sure, he said, but he very much hoped so. “The United States was born with an imperialist impulse. There has been a long confrontation between Monroe and Bolívar. … It is necessary that the Monroe Doctrine be broken.” As his tirade against evil America mounted, Penn broke in to say that surely Chávez would be happy to see the arrest of Osama Bin Laden.

I was hugely impressed by the way that the boss scorned this overture. He essentially doubted the existence of al-Qaida, let alone reports of its attacks on the enemy to the north. “I don’t know anything about Osama Bin Laden that doesn’t come to me through the filter of the West and its propaganda.” To this, Penn replied that surely Bin Laden had provided quite a number of his very own broadcasts and videos. I was again impressed by the way that Chávez rejected this proffered lucid-interval lifeline. All of this so-called evidence, too, was a mere product of imperialist television. After all, “there is film of the Americans landing on the moon,” he scoffed. “Does that mean the moon shot really happened? In the film, the Yanqui flag is flying straight out. So, is there wind on the moon?” As Chávez beamed with triumph at this logic, an awkwardness descended on my comrades, and on the conversation.

Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap. Even his macabre foraging in the coffin of Simón Bolívar was initially prompted by his theory that an autopsy would prove that The Liberator had been poisoned—most probably by dastardly Colombians. This would perhaps provide a posthumous license for Venezuela’s continuing hospitality to the narco-criminal gang FARC, a cross-border activity that does little to foster regional brotherhood.

Many people laughed when Chávez appeared at the podium of the United Nations in September 2006 and declared that he smelled sulfur from the devil himself because of the presence of George W. Bush. But the evidence is that he does have an idiotic weakness for spells and incantations, as well as many of the symptoms of paranoia and megalomania.

Guess he’s getting a full dose of the sulfur now.

Well , he sold the US a million barrels of oil a day .

He wasn’t a Socialist, he was a Populist, inspired by Simon Bolivar. He gave the Fascist Elitists and the rapacious Corporations some heartburn, and used the resources and money to build infrastructure, and help the Lower and Working Classes.

I’ve nothing ill to say about him.

I am saddened that already, the Fascist vultures are beginning to circle over Venezuela.

re: #4 monkeyfister

Greetings, hatchling.

re: #4 monkeyfister

Yes he was a populist, (including a populist among the most despotic nations of the planet) buying votes with money and promises that have not made most people’s lives better and has ensured that there will be no real democracy in Venezuela for a long time to come.

I’ll just say Rest…

re: #1 Destro

Chavez was still the best and least corrupt leader Venezuela ever had.

[Link: en.wikipedia.org…]

Pretty easy making comparisons with dictators. What does that prove?

Him and Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

re: #6 Achilles Tang

Yes he was a populist, (including a populist among the most despotic nations of the planet) buying votes with money and promises that have not made most people’s lives better and has ensured that there will be no real democracy in Venezuela for a long time to come.

I’ll just say Rest…

Then I’ll say it: Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish.

The opposition in Venezuela had been so corrupt that being out of power for a while might have done something for their integrity. Let us hope.

re: #7 Achilles Tang

Pretty easy making comparisons with dictators. What does that prove?

The last American approved freedom loving rulers of Venezuela slaughtered over 3,000 of their people in the 1990s when the people - living in an oil and resource rich country - rioted because they could not afford to but bread anymore. That fact prove something? It does to me.

re: #11 Destro

The last American approved freedom loving rulers of Venezuela slaughtered over 3,000 of their people in the 1990s when the people - living in an oil and resource rich country - rioted because they could not afford to but bread anymore. That fact prove something? It does to me.

I’m not sure what people were slaughtered. Far more than that are slaughtered every year by the rampant crime that the “populists” have been unable to deal with.

I repeat my point, if you want to give credit to a leader, try to find comparisons with decent leaders instead of just dictators like the past or the ones he hobnobbed with.