In honor of end of the semester committments I will not be doing a show this weekend. However, there are two stories I wanted to break while they are still hot, both dealing with Latin America.

Chavez Wins re-election by a wide margin
Chavez has won in Venezuela. While the terms of his re-election are kind of shakey (and due to a constitutional question that he had interpretted to allow him the opportunity to run for re-election, which, while observing that a President can’t serve several three terms successively, dates his office from half way through his term which actually began in 2000, claiming that he was removed by the coup, and therefore the rule doesn’t apply to him) he nonetheless won 62 percent of the vote. It is short of his goal of 70 percent of the vote. His opponents were saying in recent weeks that anything less than 70 percent would be counted as a victory for anti-chavista forces, but, to be honest, this is not true. They were able to get 30 percent or so to go vote for the opposition, but… the vast majority still voted for Chavez. The result was never actually in doubt, and Chavez rejoins the leftists in Latin America (Morales, Castro, Ortega, and Correa [and Nancy Pelosi]) with this victory.

In perhaps unrelated news, Augusto Pinochet suffered a major heart attack, further buttressing his lawyer’s arguments that he is too ill to be put on trial for the thousands of murdered, dissappeared and tortured during his 17 year dictatorship in Chile. It is difficult to say anything nice about this man: the nicest thing I can say about him is that he REALLY abused his power. His end will be soon, and with any luck, he’ll meet the people who’s blood stain his hands there waiting for him in the afterlife. If he doesn’t answer for his crimes today, you can bet he will someday. For his sake, I hope that day is soon, so that balance can be restored to his soul and his debt repaid.

W Doc