I loved the irony in this
Washington Times article. The article is about how Republican U.S. Senator Judd Gregg (NH) stopped at a gas station and bought a Powerball ticket on his way to a vote in the Capitol. It turns out that his ticket was worth almost $900,000. The ironic thing (that the article fails to comment on) is that the Senator was buying gas from Citgo, a U.S. oil marketing and refining company that is wholly-owned by the government of Venezuela.
Venezuela's democratically elected socialist leader, Hugo Chavez, recently volunteered to sell 1.5 million barrels of oil per day at a 40% discount from market price to the poor and needy in the U.S. following the spikes in oil and gasoline prices and the hurricane disasters that struck the heart of the U.S. oil refinery industry on the Gulf Coast. The Republican-led U.S. government has refused to help coordinate this relief effort. Instead, Citgo has started pilot programs in Chicago, the South Bronx, and Boston working with non-profit groups to supply cheap home-heating fuel. Typically, Chavez uses the profits from the state-owned Citgo to pay for social support programs in Venezuela.
The media refer to Chavez at the "Anti-Bush" and "Bush's Arch Enemy". While Bush was received with peaceful and violent protest in his recent trip to South America to promote a free trade agreement, Chavez was hailed and respected.
As you may remember, Pat Robertson (tel-evangelist) recently called for the very un-Christian assassination of Chavez. Robertson said that the U.S. should kill Chavez because the country's socialist control of 12% of U.S. oil imports could cripple our economy should Venezuela decide to withhold its oil. Instead, Chavez is offering that oil at a 40% discount to the poorest Americans.
Though President Bush and the un-Christian religious fanatics are violently opposed to Venezuela's leader, it is nice to see a Republican Senator supporting a government that is being so generous to America's downtrodden.