Sev wrote:
He undoubtedly has dictatorial tendencies. He's also done more for
the poor than previous governments- and he's having a good time with
Bush. Boycott if you wish. OTOH, I thought about boycotting Lukoil
after hearing about the recent killing of Russia's bravest journalist-
Putin is a thug, too. As Tom Friedman of the NY Times has been
writing(though he's a bit of a late convert), our dependency on oil is
unhealthy in a lot of ways.

But Friedman is deranged. There are dozens of web sites debunking his
predictions. Heck, even the ombudsman for the NY Times had to publically
apologize for Friedman's errors regarding the 2000 election (Friedman
himself evidently refused to correct his columns).

As for Chavez doing more for the poor than previous governments, that may
very well be the problem. The government should get out of the way and let
the poor do for themselves. For example, we had over a 100,000 poor,
unemployed, Katrina evacuees come to Houston. Today, most of them have jobs.