More Chavez

This guy would be comical were he not the commander of a nation's armed forces. In his latest intelligent dissection of geo-political trends, the enlightened Herr Chavez says:

"The planet's most serious danger is the government of the United States. ... The people of the United States are being governed by a killer, a genocidal murderer and a madman," Chavez said at a meeting of Venezuelan and Brazilian business executives in Caracas.

My gut instinct is to ignore this kind of silly hyperbole. But I have the gnawing feeling that this is exactly the type of drivel that is being fed (by various groups) to foreign populations the world over -- an obvious problem when the US is attempting to use its moral suasion on the world stage.

I know that political hyperbole has existed since the dawn of the first politician (and is well attested to in Roman political oratories even during the time of the Republic), but to equate Bush with the sorts of leaders who did actually order mass killings (i.e. Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, et al) displays poor judgement to a staggering degree.

Wisdom

Obviously Hugo Chavez is a man of deep insight.

President Hugo Chavez cautioned Venezuelan parents to protect their children from Halloween with a spooky warning that the US tradition is rooted in "terrorism."

"What they have implanted here, which is really a 'gringo' custom, is terrorism," Chavez said, quoted in the local press. "They disguise children as witches and wizards, that is contrary to our culture."

If he wants to see real US cultural terrorism, we'll send Rosanne Barr, Madonna and a maybe Susan Sarandon to him.