An email (from a Venezuelan I think):

Why don’t you go and ask the hundreds of families in Venezuela who mourn the deaths caused by this murderous maniac? Why don’t you go ask the opinion of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled their country in horror?

“I have the impression, Mr. Imperialist Dictator,” quothe the lunatic, “that you will live the rest of your days in a nightmare, because every where you look, we are going to rise, insurgents against North American imperialism.” To which one reader had this to say:

Sounds a lot like “We will bury you.” [Recalling the soon-to-be-deposed N. Kruschev]

Chavez used the speech to promote Noam Chomsky’s latest work of intellectualized stupidity, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance . One reader referred me to this article on Chomsky by Keith Windschuttle, to which I add this great take-down by Jeffrey Isaac.

For those who missed it earlier this year, Kurt Weiland of the great University of Texas at Austin, wrote in Foreign Affairs that Hugo Chavez’s political clock in Venezuela is ticking. With Mexico’s recent decision to campaign openly for Guatemala, and against Venezuela, for a Security Council seat, his diplomatic clock might be ticking, too. This may explain his belated “me, too!” bid to join the Axis of Evil.

On a personal note, speaking for my family (Cubans and Puerto Ricans) I have to say that Venezuelans are among our favorite people in the world. We are in a sense part of the same cultural nation, which I call the “salsa jurisdiction.” We speak the same Caribbean Spanish, we admire each other’s music and generally get along great. The day Chavez falls, the streets of Caracas will turn into the biggest fiesta of our times, and I will be right there.