Chavez and Venezuela

In the past couple of days, the Venezuelan government granted Hugo Chavez the power to rule by decree. I (almost) can't believe that this is happening. The only other government that I'm aware of that voluntarily gave a man the power to rule by decree was Germany in the late '30's. How in the world can a group of elected leaders say to their people "We're so stupid and so incompetent that we're just going to give away YOUR power to a raving lunatic. Have a nice day!" Jeez, you'd think they'd have some bigger cojones than that. Even the guys who lost out to Hussein, Castro, and Kim Il-Jung did so at the point of a gun. But no, these losers in Venezuela just gave it away.

I see a trend here: the more oil a country has, the more wacko its leaders are ... unfortunately, that means that the people of the oil-rich country are usually abysmally poor because their wacko leaders are busily siphoning off all the riches. Chavez included.

Have a nice day, Venezuela.