How do you say “Let’s Move” in Spanish?

President Hugo Chavez urged Venezuelans on Sunday to cut their calories to avoid obesity — the latest lifestyle recommendation by the self-proclaimed socialist crusader.

Chavez has lobbied in recent weeks against what he calls the evils of capitalism, including alcoholism, breast implants and violent television programs.

“Be careful with weight gain!” warned Chavez on Sunday, speaking during his weekly television and radio program. “We are eating better, that’s been proven. We’re leaving malnutrition behind. It no longer exists in the country, but be careful with obesity.”

Chavez — who often dispenses advice to supporters during his marathon speeches — said he’d start a campaign to urge Venezuelans to consume less fatty foods and eat in a healthier fashion.

Venezuelans who would like to get rid of any fatty foods in their pantries and refrigerators are being encouraged to donate them to Michael Moore the next time he visits.

(h/t Weasel Zippers)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Granted there’s a lot of speculation in Hugo’s statement. To follow this, you must assume the following: A) There was once an intelligent civilization on Mars, and B) They had Starbucks, Baby Gaps, a stock exchange, lots of smokestacks, zero scrubber technology and lived in an alternate reality written and directed by James Cameron.

If you needed any more evidence Chavez needs to quit chewing coca and smoking rolled up pages from Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance, here you go:

CARACAS (Reuters) – Capitalism may be to blame for the lack of life on the planet Mars, Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday.

“I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet,” Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day.

“Careful! Here on planet Earth where hundreds of years ago or less there were great forests, now there are deserts. Where there were rivers, there are deserts,” Chavez said, sipping from a glass of water.

Maybe Hugo should take Sean Penn all the rest of his friends and go to the planet that capitalism failed to establish a Marxist utopia. The journey itself would be worth watching. Have you ever seen how a parrot responds to weightlessness? It’s hilarious.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Contained in an interview in which the Marxist/capitalist (or is it the other way around?) actor griped about losing half of everything he has in his divorce is an unwarranted slap in the face to Hugo Chavez:

“Let’s face it,” [Penn] declared, “I’m a person that feels pretty alienated from the rest of the world and never felt understood by anyone.”

How quickly he forgets:

You’d at least think this would have made Sean feel understood by someone this week:

(Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sought to end a diplomatic stand-off with the United States on Tuesday by suggesting it name Bill Clinton, actor Sean Penn or director Oliver Stone as its envoy to Caracas.

“Never felt understood by anyone”? Hugo must be heartbroken.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The president, on the way back from the NATO summit in Portugal, seems in no particular hurry to return to Slurpeeland.

From CBS News’ Mark Knoller and CNN’s Ed Henry aboard Air Force One (via HAP and Fox Nation):

Maybe Obama just wanted to return Hugo’s book and apologize for making notes in the margin.

Sean Penn is most likely on his way to Venezuela as we speak just in case this is no joke.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Desperate to hold on to his dwindling power, Venezuelan thug-in-chief Hugo Chavez has now officially moved to seize a private farm supply company. Tuck this euphemism in the memory bank: “Forced acquisition.”

Via AP:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed a decree Monday to expropriate a leading farm-supply business, promising to bring down prices of seeds and fertilizers as his government takes control.

Chavez said Monday night that he signed the decree for the “forced acquisition” of Agroislena CA.

“We’re going to pay them what it really costs,” he said in a telephone call to a talk show on state television. He read aloud parts of the decree, which takes effect on Tuesday, saying the company had become an “oligopoly” and was speculating with prices of goods such as fertilizer.

He called it a step toward boosting Venezuelan agriculture that would also bring down production costs.

Agroislena was founded in Venezuela more than five decades ago by Spanish immigrants from the Canary Islands and has grown into a market leader with branches across the country.

The company’s board of directors rejected the measure in a statement earlier Monday and urged Chavez to reconsider.

He’s already expropriated everything from “cement to retail stores.” An opposition leader who blasted Chavez’s failed farm seizures speaks a truth that resonates far beyond Venezuela’s borders:

“Everything that falls into the hands of the government is destroyed,” [Jose Manuel] Gonzalez said.

More coverage at Babalu Blog.

Flashback: October 2009 – This is what the thuggish redistribution of wealth looks like.

***

Yes, I’m reminded of the Obama ocean grab and land grabs taking place right under our noses.

A.M. Mora y Leon tipped me to this video last night of Chavista thugs confiscating farms across Venezuela. A.M. notes the parallels to what Lenin, Mao and Castro did: “But this time, some farmer had the presence of mind to turn on his cellphone camera and film the thuggery as it happened. This makes it really different. Can you imagine what things would be like if Kulaks had had a cellphone camera? It’s incredible what dictators have gotten away with and might not with this clip:”

Fausta Wertz provides translation:

A group of red shirt-wearing Chavista thugs show up at a farm and seize the farm in the name of the government, under the pretext that the 103 hectare farm is “idle land” and that the law allows them to take it over for “food production.”

The farmer protests politely, explaining that he’s been raising cattle on his farm for 23 years. He is rebuffed by another guy, who says, “this is not going to be a debate; this is a public act approved by the Venezuelan people. I’m governor and I’m here to ensure public order. There won’t be a debate, I ask you to listen to the document, after which the public will take charge of the land.”

When the farmer’s wife protests, he tells her to discuss it in court.

Chavez controls the judiciary.

The farmer is told to sign the form, and then to gather the animals so they can be accounted for.

When another one of the people who lived at the farm tries to ask a question, the man who identified himself as the governor insists that “this is not a debate, this is not a meeting, and if there’s any disruption, the public force is here,” pointing to the crowd in red shirts.

The American Left refers to this as the “persuasion of power.”

President Obama sheepishly rescinded his July 4 party invitation to Iran’s murderous mullahcracy.

But some dictators and thugs are in luck: Obama’s hot dog diplomacy has returned to Syria and Venezuela. Fire up the grill:

The Obama administration has decided to return an ambassador to both Venezuela and Syria after a diplomatic hiatus with both countries, FOX News confirmed Wednesday.

The United States and Venezuela have been working to reinstate ambassadors to each other’s capitals since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April at the Summit of the Americas, a State Department official said. The move would reverse a tit-for-tat the countries had last year, when Venezuela kicked out the U.S. ambassador and the United States did the same to Venezuela’s envoy.

“The necessary measures are being taken” to return the diplomats to their posts, the official said. “It’s in the best interests of both countries.”

The diplomatic freeze with Syria dates back much further, and a restoration of ties with the Middle Eastern country is seen as part of a broader effort to achieve a comprehensive peace between Arabs and Israelis in the region.

This diplomatic effort is said by knowledgeable sources to include a quiet campaign by the Obama administration to “bring Hamas into the (peace) process.”

A gif of the toon is here for your entertainment pleasure.

In sticking with the Animal House theme and the Obama administration — specifically Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano’s grasp of facts (or lack thereof), I just designed a t-shirt quick and dirty, and it could be a big seller:

Today’s poster-boy for Thorazine is a frequent guest in the leftist Cuckoo’s Nest: actor Sean Penn.

In a piece at the Huffington Post published yesterday, Sean Penn rode to the rescue of his pal Hugo Chavez, defending the Venezuelan dictator against his American critics like a knight in clueless armor:

I know President Chavez well. Whether or not one agrees with all his policies, what is certainly true of Chavez is that he is a warm and friendly man with a robust sense of humor (who daily risks his own life for his country in ways Dick Cheney could never imagine). To treat such a man coldly is akin to spitting on him. As a country we’ve done enough of that.

Say what you will, but it has only resulted in the self-celebration of our smirking spitters, while costing us international respect, American lives, and left wounds in the hands of our children’s future. The Cheneys, down to the O’Reillys and Hannitys and Limbaughs, effectively hate the principles upon which we were founded. They are among the greatest cowards in all of American history.

Sean’s defending an outspoken, anti-American communist dictator from certain Americans because they hate the principles upon which America was founded? Nothing can better confirm your lucidity, or hone your sense of humor for that matter, that watching a wealthy American actor defending a man who, if in power in this country, would put a fast clamp on the “artistic freedom” of Sean Penn and his vacuous pals. And the Hollywood Left has the gall to call black Republicans “self loathing”?

Whenever I see Penn, Glover, Belafonte, Spacey, et al, sucking up to anti-American, anti-capitalist thugs, goons, tinpots and despots I can’t help but think of the giddy minions boarding the spaceship at the end of the “To Serve Man” episode of the Twilight Zone. It’s a cookbook, Sean!

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the Hollywood left is that, even though they have more money than brains, most have never been quite stupid enough to move to a country that practices what they preach. But why should they when it might be coming to them?

You can learn all about Penn’s special friendship with Hugo Chavez in Sean’s upcoming sequel:

And don’t forget to catch Sean co-starring in an upcoming Three Stooges movie:

Gag.

And another handholding pic here: Ew.

Did anyone smell sulfur during the photo op?

Now, the Evil Clown (as Allahpundit calls him) can add his friendly pic with Obama to his Chavista Fan Club photo album:

Tools.

Obama is hanging with Chavez and company this weekend to “seek a new beginning with Cuba.”

Meanwhile, George Moneo at Babalu Blog points out, Oscar Elias Biscet continues to rot in prison.

For all his pro forma caveats about not endorsing every policy of the Venezuelan state, however, Kennedy nevertheless cannot manage to suppress his admiration for the so-called Bolivarian revolution, even if it is only our capitalistic consumption that makes Chavez’s 21st Century Socialism possible in the first place.

“[M]y goodness gracious,” he gushed to Business Week, “Hugo Chavez can quote Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln by heart.” …That a democracy is easier to run and elections easier to win when you blacklist the opposition, and legislative compromise a breeze when you decree laws voted down in popular referendum, is immaterial to Kennedy, who happily parrots the “CITGO, owned by the Venezuelan people” line.

I’ve stood outside the HQ of Venezuela’s nationalized oil company/ministry PDVSA. It is red-bereted soldiers as far as the eye can see, and rest assured they aren’t there to usher the hoi polloi upstairs to confer with the generals, the executives or the generals masquerading as executives. Even Chavez recognizes what a joke this is. A day after the infamous U.N. speech in which he called George W. Bush “the devil” and sent Noam Chomsky to the top of the literary pops, Chavez admitted during a visit to a Harlem church that his own people — you know, the heralded owners of Venezuela’s oil — might not be thrilled about the Kennedy-Chavez Oil for Praise program: “Some say I should be in the barrios of Caracas. Apparently I am giving away all over the world what belongs to Venezuela.”

Print that out and read it on the way home. It’s by Shawn Macomber, who’s an up-and-coming conservative journalist whose name I always look for.

___________________

{Post by See-Dubya.}

The Bush administration is accusing the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of providing cash and refuge to the militant Islamist group Hezbollah of southern Lebanon.

An investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) names Venezuelan diplomat Ghazi Nasr al Din and Venezuelan-Arab businessman Fawzi Kanan as key links between the two.

“It is extremely troubling to see the government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor for Hezbollah facilitators and fundraisers,” said Adam Szubin, political affairs director of OFAC.

Cautionary note: there’s a difference in saying members of Chavez’s government are helping terrorists, and that Chavez himself is. There’s no evidence of the latter, and (for what it’s worth) he denies it. On the other hand, he has to know what’s up, and he just promoted Ghazi Nasr al Din to a new position where he continues his Hezbollah liaison.

Here’s the OFAC report–it’s been out there since June 18th. Excerpt:

Ghazi Nasr al Din is a Venezuela-based Hizballah supporter who has utilized his position as a Venezuelan diplomat and the president of a Caracas-based Shi’a Islamic Center to provide financial support to Hizballah. Nasr al Din served until recently as Charge d’ Affaires at the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus, Syria, and was subsequently appointed the Director of Political Aspects at the Venezuelan Embassy in Lebanon.

Nasr al Din has counseled Hizballah donors on fundraising efforts and has provided donors with specific information on bank accounts where the donors’ deposits would go directly to Hizballah.

Ghazi Nasr al Din has met with senior Hizballah officials in Lebanon to discuss operational issues, as well as facilitated the travel of Hizballah members to and from Venezuela. In late January 2006, Nasr al Din facilitated the travel of two Hizballah representatives to the Lebanese Parliament to Caracas to solicit donations for Hizballah and to announce the opening of a Hizballah-sponsored community center and office in Venezuela. The previous year, Nasr al Din arranged the travel of Hizballah members to attend a training course in Iran.

Here’s the other guy, who’s not a government employee but who’s sending money and helping with operations and travel (he runs two travel agencies):

Fawzi Kan’an is a Venezuela-based Hizballah supporter and a significant provider of financial support to Hizballah. Kan’an has facilitated travel for Hizballah members and sent money raised in Venezuela to Hizballah officials in Lebanon.

Kan’an has met with senior Hizballah officials in Lebanon to discuss operational issues, including possible kidnappings and terrorist attacks. Further, Kan’an has also traveled with other Hizballah members to Iran for training.

If you still buy your gas at Chavez-owned CITGO, may I ask why?

Big Hezbollah fan, are you?
______________________

MORE: Chavez’s army is apparently getting tired of dealing with his issues.

I agree with DPUD: it’s time for a little tough love, Generals. You may need to stage an intervention.
______________________

{Post by See-Dubya}

Read and watch: Chilling.

It’s a short trip from railing about “obscene profits” to cheerleading Hugo Chavez-style takeovers of private industry.

***

Flashback: ““And guess what this member* would be all about? This member would be all about socializing — er, uh. [Pauses for several moments] …. would be about … [pause] … basically … taking over, and the government running all of your companies.”

***

GOP leader John Boehner’s office e-mails tonight and wonders which other Democrat leaders are on the Chavista bandwagon:

Two weeks ago, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) shocked many observers when she admitted to oil company executives during a House committee hearing, “This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh . . . would be about . . . basically taking over and the government running all of your companies.”

Most of those watching that hearing simply assumed Rep. Waters’ wild threat was just another extreme idea from someone on the far-left fringe of the Democratic Party. But today, a leading energy voice for House Democrats proved that her dream of nationalizing the oil industry isn’t as far-fetched as some may believe. Rather, it just may be the House Democrats’ worst kept secret.

In front of a sea of news cameras at a press conference earlier today, when senior House Democrats discussed the ongoing energy crisis that has spun out of control on their watch, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) dropped this bombshell as he stood next to House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL): He proposed a Washington takeover of the entire oil industry! Here’s what Rep. Hinchey said:

“Should the people of the United States own refineries? Maybe so. Frankly, I think that’s a good idea. Then we could control the amount of refined product much more capably that gets out on the market…”

“So if there’s any seriousness about what some of our Republican colleagues are saying here in the House and elsewhere about improving the number of refineries, then maybe they’d be willing to have these refineries owned publicly, owned by the people of the United States, so that the people of the United States can determine how much of the product is refined and put out on the market.”

“To me, that sounds like a very good idea.”

Rep. Hinchey is not unfamiliar with energy policy. Rather, he is a leader on the issue for House Democrats and was chosen by Democratic leaders to appear at today’s press conference because of his energy expertise. After all, he serves on the powerful Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which controls federal spending on many energy-related matters, and the Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over energy and environmental matters.

After today’s shocking display, the American people are wondering: what other House Democratic leaders support Washington bureaucrats taking over our nation’s oil refineries?

It’s not very often I agree with Hugo Chavez, but I can’t really disagree with him on this:

In his weekly television and radio programme on Sunday, Mr Chavez urged Mr Cano to “let all these people go”.

“There are old folk, women, sick people, soldiers who have been prisoners in the mountain for 10 years,” he added.

“The guerrilla war is history. At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place.”

BBC Americas editor Emilio San Pedro says the message amounts to all-out about-face for a man who a few months called on the world to recognise the Farc as a legitimate army.

Wow, they’ve had a bad year, and it just got worse. Without Papa Hugo backing them, the FARC is running short of allies in this hemisphere. Maybe they should follow this lady’s lead and hang up their Kalashnikovs.

On the other hand, if you’ve got Nancy Pelosi and Obama in your corner, Chavez is small fry.

UPDATE: Chavez recently announced a controversial counterintelligence scheme that would have forced citizens to spy on each other. In the same announcement in which he addressed the FARC, he also mentioned he was withdrawing the new law.

____________________
{Post by See-Dubya} Cano’s name was corrected.

The information captured there, which was verified by Interpol the other day, continues to pay off on the world stage. It details the FARC’s relations with Hugo Chavez, it led to the arrest of arms dealer Viktor Bout, and it even revealed the FARC’s preference for an Obama victory in the upcoming U.S. election.

Now there’s another dividend–FARC’s top surviving commander “Karina” will fight no more forever. She surrendered this week after 24 years of fighting our ally.

Sounds like a real sweetheart:

Asked about news reports of guerrilla operations she may have participated in, Karina admitted to nothing. “They accuse me of a lot of things I wasn’t part of,” she said.

But Miguel Antonio Paez told CNN en Espanol that he remembers well the woman who, with a band of guerrillas, stopped the bus he was on in 2004 in northwest Colombia, ordered him and the other passengers off and the bus be burned.

“The commander of that guerrilla group — a dark-haired woman, tall, with one eye missing — called herself Karina,” he said.

“She ordered me tied up. Here, I have the marks from the wires, and there, while I was tied up, she lopped off my penis and testicles and I remained castrated for all my life.”

The war will continue, but this is a major victory in Colombia’s decades-long counterinsurgency.

It’s also a victory for Plan Colombia, which both U.S. Senate liberals and the FARC have long opposed.