> "HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,
> popular with the poor at home, offered on Tuesday to help needy
> Americans with cheap supplies of gasoline.
>
> "We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor
> communities in the United States," the populist leader told
> reporters at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba.
>
> Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA owns Citgo, which has 14,000 gas
> stations in the United States.
>
> The offer may sound attractive to Americans feeling pinched by
> soaring prices at the pump but not to the U.S. government, which
> sees Chavez as a left-wing troublemaker in Latin America.
<snip>
> Chavez and Castro offered to give poor Americans free health care
> and train doctors free of charge."
>
> http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/23/23132/7021
_Cheap gas_ and free health care for poor Americans! With programs like these, pretty soon, Hugo Chavez could get as high an approval rating in the US as he does at home. Even now, his rating here is probably higher than Bush's and most (all?) Democrats'. And it must be said that he understands Americans better than Ralph Nader (who would go for free health care but not cheap gas) does. :->
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>