Jimmy Carter logic

Apparently, President Carter (new motto: "Not as bad as Obama!") is mourning the death of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez by claiming Chavez did a lot for the poor of Venezuela.  Well, if stealing two billion dollars from them while creating an economic recession in a nation selling petroleum for about a hundred bucks per barrel counts as "helping the poor", then I guess yes, but if I were a poor person in Venezuela, I'd be hoping for a different kind of help.  Hopefully the next leader of Venezuela can be a little bit more like the governors of Texas, North Dakota, or Alaska, where they understand a little bit about how to transform oil wealth into prosperity.

For that matter, I'm kinda hoping that our next President will be someone who understands a bit about how to create prosperity, come to think of it.  This silliness about making the sequester "as painful as possible for all but the President" needs to end.

Update: there is some indication--and regrettably the sources are not named--that the death of Hugo Chavez may have been more or less caused by his Cuban doctors at the direction of the Cuban government, who understand that without an oil lifeline from a sympathetic Venezuelan government, their economy is toast.  The article further points to Cuban manipulation of the electoral processes in Venezuela, and the possibility/likelihood of a civil war coming out of this.