Quote Originally Posted by El Kabong View Post
Hugo Chavez was a paper tiger, he would rattle his little toy saber to look like a big man to his people (oooh scary scary ) but he was just a punk. He loved the United States because we bought their oil and no matter what he THOUGHT he was going to do he knew that it was a good thing to not piss us off too much.

As for his governing , I assume miles will champion the guy as some sort of awesome dude that helped the poor. And I assume that because miles would champion anyone that speaks ill of the United States as miles is a hateful dick and that's about it. Under Chavez the middle class fled Venezuela like rats off a sinking ship. In 2011 the intentional homicide rate per 100,000 population was 45.1 compared with 25.0 just twelve years earlier ...double digit inflation is hitting that country hard now as well.


I believe in being open-minded and.... I may not agree with Lyle on a lot of things.... but I can personally vouch for this statement. I've personally known many middle-class and professional Venezuelans who have left everything behind while fleeing the Chavez government. Many have relocated to Puerto Rico, where we speak the same language (Spanish), and exist under the American system. What better measure of a leader's worth than the opinion of his own people?

Chavez may have brought a measure of prosperity to Venezuela, but he was a loose cannon. What was even worse... he very much "discouraged" political opposition, if you know what I mean.

Chavez's only redeeming quality was that he hated George Bush.
But other than that, there were definitely more minuses than pluses.