At this point, I don't really care about the feud between Exxon and the loony Chavez. They both deserve each other so listening to either side cry about the money that the other is trying to take means nothing. If it's not Exxon and Venezuela it's Shell and Nigeria or some other heated conflict with an oil company and another area. For anyone paying attention, there's an obvious trend. The oil companies are involved with conflict somewhere and then prices go up, again. This is a rich mans game of chicken that doesn't mean anything outside of their elite circle though for the rest of the world it means higher prices. Thanks for nothing.
President Hugo Chavez suffered a stunning defeat Monday in a referendum that would have let him run for re-election indefinitely and impose a socialist system in this major U.S. oil supplier.
Voters rejected the sweeping measures Sunday by a vote of 51 percent to 49 percent, said Tibisay Lucena, chief of the National Electoral Council. She said that with 88 percent of the votes counted, the trend was irreversible.
Even just talking about eternal rule for any candidate is creepy and with Chavez in particular, yikes. I had flashbacks to my recent visit to Egypt where the locals complained about the eternal rule of Mubarak. Egyptians consistently grumbled about Bush/Blair though they always said "at least you can eventually get rid of those guys. We can't. We're stuck with Mubarak and his son forever."
