Sean Penn Pops In On Hugo Chavez Vigil In Bolivia

Hugo Chavez was back in Cuba for more cancer surgery, his fourth, but he's not blaming the U.S. just yet.  And just to lend support, one of  the Venezuelan president's best buddies- lefty actor Sean Penn- popped over to Bolivia (another lefty-led country) to participate in a candlelight vigil for poor ailing Chavez.

Chavistas along with Bolivian officials and the Venezuelan ambassador to La Paz, Crisbeylee Gonzalez, gathered at some diplomatic venue and were delighted to have Sean Penn show up wearing his snazzy Venezuelan flag jacket.

“Thank you, Sean,” said Gonzalez, “for joining us and for wanting to be here. We know President Chavez is a good friend of yours, and you didn’t hesitate one second about coming here with us to this vigil."

Sean Penn gushed:

“He’s one of the most important forces we’ve had on this planet." “And I’ll wish him nothing but that great strength he has shown over and over again. I do it in love, and I do it in gratitude.

“I just want to say, from my very American point of view, of my friend President Chavez: It is only possible to be so inspiring as he is, as a two-way street. And he would say that his inspiration is the people.”

Inspiring and one of the most important forces on this planet?  Whatever.

Okay, so Penn didn't fly to La Paz exclusively for the vigil, he was there for Jacob Ostreicher, an American capitalist entrepreneur who has been in jail (without a trial) for 18 months for money laundering, a charge he claims he's innocent of. The bizarre story reads like a movie, which is probably why Penn attended the release hearing. It's still odd, since Ostreicher is definitely a capitalist and Penn's sympathies obviously run decidedly left.

So why does Chavez fly to Cuba for all his medical work?  Isn't the medical care in his socialist country good enough? It should be.

Hugo Chavez Thinks The U.S. Gave Him and Other Lefty Latin Leaders Cancer

The always laughable Hugo Chavez, has come out with another doozy. This time, the loco Venezuelan President said he thinks that the U.S. might have given him, along with several other lefty Latin leaders, the big "C".  Yes, somehow the U.S. spread some cancer-inducing mojo their way, and voila.  Apparently, these thoughts came to him after he heard Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has thyroid cancer.

“It’s very difficult to explain, even with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some of us in Latin America,” Chavez said in a nationally televised speech to the military. “Would it be so strange that they’ve invented technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?”

Now he wants a powwow with others who have had cancer, to compare notes. That would include Fernando Lugo (Paraguay) and Luiz Inacio Da Silva and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. He also told other lefties to watch their backs:

“I’m just sharing my thoughts, but it’s very, very, very strange,” Chavez said. “Evo take care of yourself, Correa, be careful, we just don’t know,” he said, referring to Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, the leaders of Bolivia and Ecuador.

He also shared some advice that his commie buddy Fidel Castro gave him:

“Fidel always tells me, ‘Chavez be careful, they’ve developed technology, be careful with what you eat, they could stick you with a small needle,’” the Venezuelan leader said today. “In any case, I’m not accusing anyone, I’m just using my freedoms to reflect and issue comments on very strange events that are hard to explain.”

But Chavez has always been uber-paranoid and bizarre. He's convinced the U.S. is planning on invading Venezuela, although he shares those delusional beliefs with many others.  An article posted on Venezuelanalysis.com back in 2007 claimed that an invasion of Venezuela was imminent. Let's see-  it's been 4 years hence, and nada. In 2009, there was another article on this blog talking about a planned invasion by the U.S. through Colombia, and 2 years later- nada. Then in 2010 on the blog 'Postcards From The Revolution', award winning journalist Eva Golinger who is currently residing in what she terms "a country with a vibrant democracy and the largest oil reserves in the world"  [that would be Venezuela she's referring to] also talks about that invasion. I'm still waiting. But what's even more stupefying is that seemingly intelligent people actually buy into what he says.  Just take a look at the comments on Eva's blog and you'll see what I mean.  Pretty darn strange.

But I still think that the most laugh-inducing Chavez comment was when he claimed that capitalism killed the Martians.

I think I might actually miss him when he's gone.