Hugo Chavez is hurting Venezuela not the US

(This cartoon is from Babalu)

If you don't speak Spanish, see this:

Chavez: "You are a devil, you smell like sulfur, you are a drunk, you are the demon, you are genocidal Mr. Devil, you are a Dictator, you are an assasin Mr. Devil, you are..."

Bush: "Yeah!Yeah!, everything you say, filler up boy!"

At the UN, Chavez was a loudmouth punk who took cheap shots at Pres. Bush and the UN itself.

Back home, Chavez is not doing so well.

The Washington Post has an outstanding editorial today: Hurricane Chávez

It confirms what many of us have been saying. Chavez is hurting Venezuela rather than Pres. Bush or the US. Check out some key points:

"Since Mr. Chávez took power seven years ago, Venezuela has mismanaged its oil so disastrously that production may have fallen by almost half, according to the estimates of outsiders, reducing global oil supply by a bit more than 1 percent.

He inherited a competent national oil company that produced three times more per worker than its Mexican counterpart. He immediately starved it of investment capital and dispatched ignorant political cronies to oversee it. When this abuse provoked a strike, Mr. Chávez fired the staff en masse, getting rid of two-thirds of the skilled employees and managers.

Mr. Chávez imagines that he can damage the United States by rerouting Venezuelan oil to other markets.

He fails to understand that oil is fungible: If Venezuela's crude is sold to the Chinese, the Chinese will buy less of it elsewhere, freeing up supplies for U.S. consumers.

But Mr. Chávez also appears oblivious to the technical difficulties in sending oil halfway round the world rather than selling it in his own hemisphere.

Oil tankers do not come cheap, and China will have to build special refineries to process the heavy brand of crude that Venezuela produces."

Beyond economic mismanagement, what we are witnessing in Venezuela is a madman using undemocratic means to stay in power:

"Yet it is not the United States but rather Mr. Chávez's own countrymen who should most fear his intentions. Venezuela's courts, media organizations and civil society groups have been bullied into submission, and Mr. Chávez is talking about a constitutional change that would allow him to remain in power indefinitely."

Let's hope that Venezuelans can rid themselves of this lunatic named Hugo before it is too late.

P.S. Pay attention Mexico. You have your own little Hugo living in some tent. His name is LO and he speaks with a different accent. Yet, they are both leftist charlatans. As they say in Texas, these two are up to no good!