AmeriKa tried it before, it will try it again.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be splashed on the front-page of the NYT!
And it is not favorable press for him, it never is, but read the articles like I do.
You'll be amazed at the lies and the subtle truths that are hidden:
"Chávez allies defect as referendum nears; Polls point to possible defeat for president" by Juan Forero/Washington Post November 30, 2007
CUMANA, Venezuela - Few associates had been as loyal to President Hugo Chávez as the governor in this coastal state, Ramon Martinez. And few are now more determined to defeat Chávez as he campaigns for constitutional changes that, if approved by voters on Sunday, could extend his presidency for life.
Chávez, 53 and in his ninth year in office, was until recently predicted to win a referendum that would permit him to run for office indefinitely, appoint governors to federal districts he would create, and control the purse strings of one of the world's major oil-producing countries.
But Martinez and a handful of others who once were prominent pillars in the Chávez machine, have defected, saying approval of 69 constitutional changes would effectively turn Venezuela into a dictatorship run at the whim of one man. They have been derided by Chávez as traitors, but their unimpeachable leftist credentials have given momentum to a movement that pollsters say may deliver Chávez his first electoral defeat.
"The proposal would signify a coup d'état," said Martinez, 58, whose dapper appearance belies his history as a guerrilla and Communist Party member. "Here the power is going to be concentrated in one person. That's very grave."
Pollsters in Caracas say Venezuelans increasingly agree, even those who continue to support the president but say the proposed overhaul of an eight-year-old constitution goes too far.
Datanalisis, a Caracas polling firm that earlier this month was predicting Chávez winning, found in a poll last week that 48 percent would vote "no" to the changes, compared with 39 percent in support, said Luis Vicente Leon, poll director.
"In those three weeks, what's happened is the people have been sensitized," Leon said. Datanalisis accurately predicted Chávez victories in past elections, including last year's presidential election, in which he won a second six-year term. Leon said the president's vigorous campaigning in these last few days is closing the gap. "It all depends on the capacity to mobilize," he said, "and we know who has that capacity."
Indeed, the government has embarked on an all-out crusade including a barrage of televised commercials and political rallies, with Chávez giving three or more speeches each day. When the day is done, Chávez appears on Mario Silva's "The Razor," a talk show on government television, where he expounds well into the night. His face stares down from billboards and placards with the word "Si," adorning balconies and windows.
Darleny Cordoba, 24, recently received, along with a group of friends, about $12,000 in government money to start up a restaurant. She was bused from Cumana to Caracas for a rally. She says she's voting for the president.
"I think the reforms are good," she said. ". . .The articles they're putting in will be better than before."
The president has characterized the referendum as a plebiscite on his rule, telling a packed arena recently that anyone who says he supports Chávez but votes "no" is a "true traitor."
Chávez also warns that opponents of the changes who have been protesting in the streets are collaborating with the Bush administration to assassinate him, a frequent accusation in this politically charged country.
He says the proposal will give more power to the people through newly empowered community councils and cut bureaucracy from provincial governments, freeing up money for social programs. Chávez denies that he desires more power.
"I don't want to accumulate power, for what?" he said in a speech this week to progovernment businessmen. "I'm an antipower subversive, for those who haven't noticed."
Major Chávez backers who have publicly broken with him said the proposed changes are all about amassing power in the presidency, which already controls the National Assembly, the courts, and most state and local governments. "The proposal is illegal," Marisabel Rodriguez, a former wife of the president, said in a statement this week.
In interviews, three key former allies of the president said they remain true to leftist values, but felt it was time to break with Chávez because of what they characterized as his lack of tolerance and his drive for more power.
"We've all been revolutionaries and we've believed in socialism all our lives, but socialism within democracy," said Ismael Garcia, secretary-general of Podemos, a party that broke with Chávez.
"We have to ask him, how do you feel abandoning a constitution that says Venezuela is a state of laws, of justice for all, that it's federal, decentralized, plural and diverse?"
The biggest blow to Chávez came when retired General Raul Baduel, 52, turned against him earlier this month.
Chávez, Baduel, and two other young army officers formed a clandestine antigovernment group 25 years ago that eventually spawned the movement that put Chávez in power. Later, as an army commander, Baduel remained loyal to Chávez during a 2002 coup that had tacit support from the Bush administration.
"The proposal, in addition to taking power from the people, is taking the country to disaster," Baduel said. Baduel said he carefully pondered whether to publicly oppose the overhaul.
His conscience, he said, finally prompted him to act. "We need to be careful to distance ourselves from the Marxist orthodoxy that considers that democracy and its separation of powers is just an instrument of bourgeoisie domination," Baduel said."
"In Chávez Territory, Signs of Dissent" by SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 29 — Three days before a referendum that would vastly expand the powers of President Hugo Chávez, this city’s streets were packed on Thursday with tens of thousands of opponents to the change. The protests signaled that Venezuelans may be balking at placing so much authority in the hands of one man.
Even some of Mr. Chávez’s most fervent supporters are beginning to show signs of hesitation at backing the constitutional changes he is promoting, which would end term limits for the president and greatly centralize his authority. Other measures would increase social security benefits for the poor and shorten the workday.
New fissures are emerging in what was once a cohesive bloc of supporters, pointing to the toughest test at the polls for Mr. Chávez in his nine-year presidency.
In the slums of the capital, where some of the president’s staunchest backers live amid the cinder-block hovels, debate over the changes has grown more intense in recent days.
“Chávez is delirious if he thinks we’re going to follow him like sheep,” said Ivonne Torrealba, 29, a hairdresser in the gritty Coche district, who has supported Mr. Chávez in every election since his first campaign for president in 1998. “If this government cannot get me milk or asphalt for our roads, how is it going to give my mother a pension?”
Both Mr. Chávez, a self-described socialist who has won elections by wide margins, and his critics say opinion polls show they will prevail, suggesting a highly contentious outcome. But departing from its practice in last year’s presidential election, Venezuela did not invite electoral observers from the Organization of American States and the European Union, opening the government to claims of fraud if he wins.
The intensified polarization has altered this city’s appearance, with graffiti of “Sí” by the president’s supporters competing with “No” scrawled throughout Caracas. A pro-Chávez march is scheduled here for Friday before the frenetic campaigning around the referendum ends. Polling places are to close at 5 p.m. Sunday, with results expected as early as that evening.
“I’m out here because I want my children to live in a country ruled by a president, not a king,” said Alexander Dávila, 42, a bank manager at Thursday’s march carrying a sign reading, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure.”
Violence has already marred the weeks preceding the vote. Two students involved in anti-government protests claimed they had been kidnapped and tortured this week by masked men in Barquisimeto, an interior city. And in Valencia, another city, a supporter of Mr. Chávez was shot dead this week in an exchange of gunfire at a protest site.
Tension has also been heightened by rare criticism of the constitutional overhaul from a breakaway party in Mr. Chávez’s coalition in the National Assembly and former confidants of the president; the government has called this dissent “treason.”
Some of the most stinging criticism lately is from Marisabel Rodríguez, Mr. Chávez’s ex-wife. This week on Caracol Radio of Colombia, she said he had threatened her with death after she publicly criticized the government’s policies. (Mr. Chávez has not publicly responded to her accusation.)
Mr. Chávez and senior officials here have exhibited increasingly erratic behavior. Mr. Chávez has lashed out at leaders in Colombia and Spain and asked for an investigation into whether CNN was seeking to incite an assassination attempt against him.
Reports of such plots are not in short supply here. The main state television network broadcast coverage this week of a memorandum in Spanish that it claimed had been written by the C.I.A. in which destabilization plans against Mr. Chávez were laid out. American involvement in Venezuelan politics remains a particularly delicate issue here, after the Bush administration tacitly supported a coup in 2002 that briefly ousted Mr. Chávez.
“We reject and are disappointed in the Venezuelan government’s allegations that the United States is involved in any type of conspiracy to affect the outcome of the constitutional referendum,” Benjamin Ziff, a spokesman for the United States Embassy here, said in a statement.
A C.I.A. spokesman called the document “a fake,” while analysts, including investigators who had previously uncovered financing of Venezuelan opposition groups by the United States government, expressed doubts about the authenticity of the memo.
“I find the document quite suspect,” said Jeremy Bigwood, an independent researcher in Washington. “There’s not an original version in English, and the timing of its release is strange.”
Well, he'd know since the United States are masters at it!
I don't believe a damn word the MSM or the government say!
You tried to get him once!
By the way, I'd like to thank Venezuela and Chavez for the cheap home-heating oil, while Bush and his fat-pig oil friends raped me at the gas pump!
I don't forget things, assholes!
Even some of Mr. Chávez’s critics have welcomed some of the constitutional proposals, like measures to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual or political orientation. Political discrimination has been a contentious issue after Mr. Chávez’s purge of dissident employees from the national oil company and the politicization of the federal bureaucracy.
But the proposal to expand the president’s power to issue emergency decrees has alarmed human rights groups. The new charter would allow the president to suspend some due process rights, like the right to be tried by an independent tribunal. And Mr. Chávez could declare states of emergency for unlimited periods and censor news organizations.
“Proponents of these amendments insist that this government would never violate these basic rights,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch. “But why, then, have they gone to such lengths to empower the president to do so?”
At the home of Ms. Torrealba, the hairdresser, near open sewage alongside a deafening highway in southwestern Caracas, the shifting loyalties of some voters were on full display. In December, she and her siblings awoke with fireworks to celebrate Mr. Chávez’s re-election to a six-year term, with 63 percent of the vote.
But her sister, Yohana Torrealba, 20, said she was alarmed by what she viewed as political intimidation by teachers in Misión Ribas, a social welfare program where she takes remedial high-school-level courses.
“The instructors told us we had to vote in favor and demonstrate on the streets for Chávez,” Yohana Torrealba said. “They want Venezuela to become like Cuba.”
Throughout the slums of Coche, confusion persists about how life could change if the constitutional proposals are approved. Many residents who own their homes, however humble, fear that the government could take control of their property, despite efforts to dispel those fears by Mr. Chávez’s government.
Others wonder what will happen to the mayor and the governor they elected if Mr. Chávez wins the power to pick rulers for new administrative regions he wants to create. Some said they feared that if they voted against the proposals, the government could discriminate against them if their votes were made public.
But Mr. Chávez has an unrivaled political machine, with supporters controlling every major government institution. He also retains the loyalty of many voters in Coche and elsewhere. “It’s a lie that they’re going to take our houses away,” said Yanelcy Maitán, 40. “No one has done more for the poor than Chávez.”"
And that's one reason the U.S. hates him!
The other is because he is sitting on all that oil!
If you read both pieces through, then you can see how shitty these MSM papers are, huh?
The Times continues the propaganda drumbeat in the Business section:
Venezuela’s Fateful Choice
I really don't care about other countries and what they do, Times!
I'm more concerned with how my shithole government and shithole MSM like you are ruining my country.
