Tough news this morning that Hugo Chavez apparently survived the recall attempt against him by a much wider margin than anticipated. Dems and Republicans alike have been strangely silent about this Castro wanna be this year as the process towards his recall progressed, and I hope that's because they believed any anti-Chavez rhetoric would have hurt the opposition.

As random speculation, I wonder if Saddam would have won a referendum before the invasion? Elections were held in the Soviet Union and we all know the results of those exercises in freedom and liberty. I suspect Chavez to be only a shade better than the Kremlin when it comes to managing vote counting and the like.

Chavez wouldn't shut the oil taps off to be sure, but he's clearly a nut job who's invited tens of thousands of Cubans into the country to staff enormous public works projects. Building the free society it ain't, and for those of us hoping for its progress, this is clearly a step back.