14 - Caracas Axis

A discussion of world figures would not be complete without contemplating that rotund jolly Santa, Chavez. Bringing gifts to all good children. Oil wells that spout over national boundaries. Oil wells so bursting with power they splurt all the way to the Midwest. From Venezuela. Cheap!

Do you know where Venezuela is? Are you sure it’s that one, or could it be the one under it, or maybe one of the ones way down there on the bottom, wedged under Brazil where there’s hardly room for anything besides Argentina. Well, you’re in for a surprise. Venezuela’s not far away at all.

Big Ven covers half the top of South America. It’s what you face if you stand in Miami and look past Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. It’s the south side of a big swimming pool known as the Caribbean, whose rim is made of all those cruise-ship, tropical-island destinations.

Hugo’s been donning his swimming trunks – boxers – and taking the tide over to visit a like-minded neighbor who’s not doing too well. Love thine enemy’s enemy. They’re getting on so well together, they’re looking to expand from their little leftist circle, and Hugo was sent all the way to Asia to recruit Achy.

Achy’s a cool cat. We don’t know what he said. It’s possible Hugo doesn’t know what he said. And Fidel is not such a fool as to believe what anyone said.

But there it looms. An unholy alliance. Perhaps a new nation, netting in some of those isles of delight.

How intolerant I am. Not only intolerant, but a snob. I plain don’t like a fat man who starves his people, standing in front of the United Eunuchs, calling the chief honcho of the tribe who’s putting him up, the Devil. It’s rude. It’s childish. It instantly lowered the caliber of every single person who heard it and did not walk out – or at least unplug him. And that means you, because I didn’t see you switch off your TV.

Does it mean me? No. I don’t have a television set. I kicked it in long ago.

But don’t you worry; there are good things in store. The Three Amigos will be opening the biggest casino on God’s Earth, right there in Havana. It will have everything including Persian carpets. And fruits from the Garden of Eden, as soon as Achy gets that piece of real estate from Iraq.

This reverse Trojan horse will drain Fort Knox. But what fun we’ll have sucking up piña coladas as they suck the bucks out of us.