Reason #4 why McCain could win in November

Hugo Chavez takes relations with between Columbia and Venezuela to the brink:

Chavez told his defense minister: "move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately." He ordered the Venezuelan Embassy in Bogota closed and said all embassy personnel would be withdrawn.

The announcements by Venezuela's leftist leader pushed relations to their tensest point of his nine-year presidency, and Chavez warned that Colombia could spark a war in South America. He called the U.S.-allied government in Bogota "a terrorist state" and labelled President Alvaro Uribe "a criminal."

Chavez condemned Colombia's slaying of senior rebel commander Raul Reyes and 16 other guerrillas on Saturday, saying they were killed while they slept in a camp across the border in Ecuadorean territory.

The first thing to observe is that, on the face of things, this looks like clear evidence that socialism in one country has totally failed in Venezuela. We already know that the government's wage, price, and currency manipulations are wreaking havoc on the Venezuelan economy. Now Chavez is acting belligerant or even planning an invasion in order to extort money and loot from his neighbors.

The second thing to observe is that you would have to be a total frickin' moron to want Barack Obama in the White House during a crisis like this. Hugo Chavez is the dictator of a socialist state that could be declaring war on its capitalist, staunchly United States-allied neighbor any minute now. Hugo Chavez is also one of the dictators on Barack Obama's "will meet without preconditions" list. Barack Obama's Carter-esque foreign policy views have sympathy for socialist Venezuela. If we Americans put Obama in the White House, we're just going to have to accept that Colombia is eventually going to end up being totally screwed by the Obama administration.