There are times I swear I'm through the looking glass. This is about the nuttiest article I've read in a long time courtesy of Getting Nothing But Static From MSM. Its got Venezuala conducting an excercise simulating attack by the United States, Venezuala's President (for life) Hugo Chavez fresh off his ban of Halloween as too Gringo musing aloud that he may sneak up behind President Bush and scare him at the Americas Summit, Cuba's Speaker of Parliament Ricardo Alarcon showing up even though Cuba wasn't invited since it isn't even a pretend democracy and claiming "even if they invited us, we would not have come" (note to organizers, next time invite the Cubans so they don't show up), and ignorant 30 year old students sporting a Che shirt and spouting off stupidity: "We are going to fight against all forms of imperialism," Zamora said, voicing complaints against free-market programs some here blame for enslaving poor Latin American countries. Note to Zamora, the problem with Latin America is your lousy governments which Latin America is itself responsible for.
But there was some meat to the article, namely that President Bush will continue to push for free trade and gathering support for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Chavez, meanwhile, is trying to bribe as many neighbors as he can with Venezualan oil money to stay out. Note to Hugo - things didn't go well for the last dictator who spread his oil wealth around in an attempt to defy the United States.
