Don't Celebrate Yet

El Presidente Hugo Chavez lost in a referendum election to change the Venezuelan Constitution and allow him to run for a third term, eliminating term limits completely. The referendum would also have allowed him to suspend the constitution whenever he felt like it. In order to garner support, the referendum also would have shortened the work-day to 6 hours and would have given pensions to street vendors and housewives.

The referendum was defeated 51% to 49% and Chavez quickly called admitted defeat and called for calm ... earning him some statesmanship points. He had promised last week to cut off oil to the United States if the referendum passed and the US objected to the outcome of the election, so I was wondering what would happen if he lost.

But do not pop the champagne corks yet, Chavez will still be in power till 2010. In that time, I'm sure that this referendum will once again (maybe twice or thrice) rear its' ugly head. It only needs to be passed one time for the possibility of a President for life. Chavez has pledged to find another way to pass his reform plans.

But for now, we can take solace in the fact that 51% of Venezuelans don't want to give up democracy. I'm thinking that it is probably a bigger number ... but Chavez underestimated how much he had to stuff the ballot box in order to win.

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Why Won't He Listen?

I was overcome with the desire to steal this cartoon from http://irritableelephant.wordpress.com

Now that confession time is over ... have you heard the latest stupidity to come out of Hugo Chavez's mouth? El Presidente is accusing CNN of instigating his murder. Chavez has called for a probe by the Venezuela State Prosecutor and is considering a civil case against the company.

This all began when, during a CNN news broadcast, a picture of Chavez was shown with the caption "Who killed him?" written below. The caption was supposed to go with a picture of a dead football star, but during a production error (or as a result of a production assistant with a great sense of humor), the captions apparently got switched. The picture was taken down after a few seconds when the news anchor realized the error.

Well, at least we now know where Hugo Chavez gets his news. Besides El Presidente's insanity, why would he make such an idiotic claim? Well, it seems that the US government has been ignoring his statements recently, and his attacks on the King of Spain have back-fired ... so he needs somebody new to attack. An election battle is fast approaching on a referendum to allow Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely, and polls have the race at a dead heat. History has shown that whenever an election is approaching ... Chavez attacks someone to distract voters from what he is doing burnish his Nationalistic credentials.

In a related subject, the most popular ring-tone in Spain is now a recording of Spanish King, Juan Carlos yelling at Chavez, "Porque no te callas?" or "Why don't you shut up?" So far the ring-tone has made 1.5 million euros ($2.2 million), and coffee cups and t-shirt sales with the saying are really taking off.

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