We can finally start arguing about stuff in a public forum!

First, let's start with your closing statement:

I wonder how much the Castro government is paying comrade Hugo under the table in "solidarity" for the below-market oil exports to Cuba?  Any thoughts?

Do you really think that statement makes any sense at all? What money does Cuba have to bribe Venezuela compared to Venezuela's great size, oil reserves, and wealth?

Venezuela is an economic giant, thanks to oil.

Cuba is, economically, after 45 years of economic embargo and the fall of the Soviet 15 years ago, as poor as any nation in América (perhaps save Haiti).

The suggestion that Cuba is in any economic position to bribe Venezuela is ludicrous.

What Cuba has provided, in return, is above board and disclosed, on the table: doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists. Because Cuba, having invested in education more consistently and passionately than any other land in the hemisphere (more than the U.S., that's for sure), has trained more doctors and similar professionals than it needs. (That Cuba is much closer to developing treatments and cures for such elusive plagues as cancer and AIDS than "free market" countries is one of the most censored stories of our time: because to admit it is to admit that "market forces" do not create investment in what the people really need and want.)

Secondly, Chávez provides the same discount prices on oil to most Caribbean (and some Central American) countries that he provides to Cuba.

So why are you so focused on this one guy who governs an island of just 12 million people? Let me guess: because, if the whole truth were allowed to be told, he has disproved the neoliberal economic model.

As for Chávez, I stipulate that he has paid the IMF and World Bank on time, that he has provided a steady flow of oil to the United States, and has been, in fact, exemplary in terms of obeying capitalist rules imposed on Latin American countries. I much prefer the Kirchner-Argentina model: Fuck the IMF, cancel the debt, default! But to say that because Chávez has played his deck of cards very shrewdly that his strategy therefore comes from Vladimir Lenin is red-baiting. Gee, I thought it came from Nicolo Machiavelli. Silly me! Was Machiavelli a commie too? (No rap on Machiavelli: I studied him, too, as Banamex and others later found out.)

Finally, to say that Venezuela is an economic "basket case" because of Chávez's policies is bullshit. The country's own oligarchy has imposed lockouts (called "strikes"), sabotaged oil facilities and PDVSA (the state owned oil agency), converted every bolivariano it could into dollars and ripped them from the country into Miami banks, and the fault is theirs: and they must still pay the price for this unpatriotic crime against their own land.

Chávez, of all the elected (and he was authentically elected in fair and free elections) the smartest, most conscientious, in the hemisphere: He figured out the rules of democracy, and he played by them, and he won. And if he is, as you say, "president for life," it will be the people's decision. Like FDR, really. Of course, the U.S. oligarchs called Franklin Delano Roosevelt a commie, too.