Hugo Chavez and George Allen: ideological buddies?

By now everyone has probably heared that Chavez called Bush the "devil" at his speech at the UN yesterday. As a drunken, hate-filled liberal, I was kind of happy to hear the less civilized response to our dear leader, especially considering he compares himself to Lincoln and FDR several times a day to audiences who ponder the depths of his comments. That being said, Chavez actually made some thoughtful points that get at the heart of why the world's view of the US is so radically different from than the Bush "spreaders of democracy" version:

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.

What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I'm quoting, "Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom."

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.

...

The president then -- and this he said himself, he said: "I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace."

That's true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They'll say yes.

But the government doesn't want peace. The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.

It wants peace. But what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?

He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?

This is crossfire? He's thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.

Well, read the whole thing, it isn't just sulfer and the devil. But Chavez's presence in the news reminded, again, of good ol' George Allen. I know, I promise to drop talking about this guy, but in this debate with Jim Webb on Sunday on Meet the Press. Talking about how Iraq is going to be great, Allen suggested the following:

The other aspect of this that I’ve, I’ve asked Maliki, I’ve said it to Jafari and all the ministers, is the key for that country, for their economy is oil. And I think that their oil ought to be a national asset, and they ought to create something like the Alaska Permanent Fund where everybody in Iraq, regardless of where they live, regardless of their ethnicity, has a share in that oil. They’ll care about building up the oil capacity, upgrading it—and they’ll certainly care about anybody who’s blowing up the pipelines, because that would be money out of their pockets. Alaska they get a dividend. Every citizen ought to get a dividend in Iraq as well.

Um....is Allen suggesting a socialist, nationlization of the country's wealth? Isn't that what Chavez has been trying to do and why he's been treated with such disdain, as if he's Stalin II? I mean, it sounds like a good idea to me, but I'm a drunk and I haven't run in several election as a tax-cutting conservative, bad mouthing the ability of the goverment to affect positive change. Maybe Allen and Chavez should get together and share their passion for helping the poorest in society....