I have to give it to Venezuela's president for coming up with a diabolically clever offer of cut-rate fuel oil and free eye operations to America's poor.
Cast by the Right and the MSM as a communist, strongman and sometimes Al Quaeda sympathizer, the popularly elected and popularly re-installed leader has made an offer which, if picked up by the MSM, will drive the right absolutely bonkers!
From venezuelanalysis.com
Caracas, Venezuela, August 28, 2005 --Venezuela's Chavez said to visiting Rev. Jesse Jackson today that he would like Jackson to help with finding a way to provide discounted heating oil and free eye operations to poor communities in the U.S. Pointing out that Venezuela provides 1.5 million barrels of oil per day to the U.S., Chavez said, "we would like to provide a part of this 1.5 million barrels of oil to poor communities."
Venezuela's own CITGO would play a part in this proposal by distributing heating oil directly to some number of lower income Americans, bypassing middlemen and saving up to 30%-40%
As for the free eye operations, well, read the article and ask yourself if you feel what a citizen of a third world country must feel when they read of such initiatives directed at their own country.
I don't think I ever experienced that before.
And what would it do to a die-hard freeper to get subsidized fuel-oil or an eye operation for a son or daughter from an anti-American communist "dictator"?
Self-serving or not, it's a brilliant P.R. move if it gets press.