BoRev.Net

I just find it rather interesting that all those other countries that supposedly dislike him, didn't go left until AFTER Venezuela elected him. One can't say that they didn't look over there and start getting ideas, unless one is an ostrich like Oppy.

To be fair, I would not be too surprised if Chavez is not particularly popular at a Lat Am level. One's opinions about a foreign leader usually comes from what you watch on TV (unless said foreign leader is occupying your country or has lead coups inside yours, etc.). In Chavez's case, low ratings in Mexico and Brasil, for example will bring his Lat Am ratings considerably (because of their huge populations). The Mexican media demonizes Chávez viciously. (In Spain here it's like that too). I suspect that he's more popular in Ecuador and Bolivia for obvious reasons.

Conversely, a leader can be very popular outside their country, but unpopular inside (remember Gorbachev?). In the end, what matters more? Vzla is an economically important country, and he was elected by Vzlans, not Mexicans.

Figures that it came from the Schloppenheimer. Every piece of narcissist-lemonist crapaganda generally does.

Anybody got a line on that polling organization out of Bogota that said Obama is more popular than Jesus in Latin America, right up there with Saint Alvaro, and that Chavez might as well be el diablo to the vast dirt poor majority of the region (Chavez 26%!?)?

Here's a discussion of it at Democratic Underground. Nobody can find out anything about the poll, except that it was first pushed by Andres Oppenheimer in his Miami Herald hatefest (er...column), and he got it before the actual poll was published (and it still has not been published--i.e., press release stating polling method, etc.). We're very curious about this poll and are smelling piles of rat bastards cooking things in the Cocaine Capitol of the World, but can't find the source of the odor.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x14214

It occurs to me that Mark Penn might be involved, since his polling firm is notorious for false polls connected to coup plots in Venezuela, and he was a paid agent of the Colombian government at the same time that he worked as chief campaign adviser for Hillary Clinton. But I cannot find any connection. Same ilk, though, is my suspicion (pollsters serving U.S. corpo/fascist interests in Latin America by skewering polling criteria, i.e., only talking with people with two Jaguars in the driveway).

It also casts some major doubt on the "popularity" numbers of Uribe. I'm guessing that the polls are kinda sorta skewed...probably toward land-owning types who are awfully nervous of agitators, especially from the left. The only caller I ever heard on Mike Malloy's show actually defending the dude, was married to a Colombian woman whose family owned a sizable finca. Everyone else who ever called in to talk about Uribe, acknowledged that he's a death-squad leader.

This stuff wasn't on the piece of paper The Hawaiian signed, right?

Right?