Rangel?

[Scrappy]

And Clinton? (Clinton's advice I turned red)

The Big Apple hits back - hard

New York officials tell strongman where to go
BY ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) expressed his 'extreme displeasure' with comments made by President Chavez of Venezuela (below). Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez's outrageous comments about President Bush brought wide condemnation from political friends and foes alike yesterday - as Chavez hinted that Bush plotted the 9/11 attacks and again called him the devil.
"You don't come into my country, you don't come into my congressional district, and you don't condemn my President," Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) scolded after Chavez's rambling, 90-minute rant at Harlem's Mount Olivet Baptist Church.
"I just want to make it abundantly clear to Hugo Chavez or any other president: Don't come to the United States and think because we have problems with our President that any foreigner can come to our country and not think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our chief of state," Rangel said from Washington.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had few words for Chavez: "Despicable and disgusting."
And Gov. Pataki told Chavez to get out of town.
"The best thing he can do is go back to Venezuela and try to provide freedom for his people instead of what he's done here in New York," Pataki said.
But the crowd of hundreds of cheering Chavez supporters - including actor Danny Glover, City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) and celebrity Princeton Prof. Cornel West - waved Venezuelan flags and cheered as he made fun of Bush.
"I said he was a devil - yes, a devil. I think he's a devil," the Venezuelan president said in Spanish.
"Now, the most important thing is that a better world lives, and that the world rids itself of this menace," Chavez said. "Because, without a doubt, it's a menace to life and the world."
Chavez also denounced a string of U.S. military actions over the decades - and seemed to include the 9/11 attacks.
"To use arms with chemical weapons like they used in Fallujah, to kill all forms of life, to take planes filled with passengers and smash them into the towers ... the Twin Towers, that's barbarism," Chavez said - less than 9 miles from Ground Zero - as some in the audience hooted approval.
"The devil, yes, the devil," Chavez said. "Seriously."
His angry man routine came just a day after Chavez told world leaders at the UN General Assembly that the podium still smelled of sulfur from when Bush spoke there earlier.
Former President Bill Clinton said Chavez's tactics could backfire.
"It makes him look small and undermines his effectiveness," Clinton told Fox News Channel.
Yesterday, Chavez said Bush tries to walk like John Wayne - strutting onstage to demonstrate - and made fun of the drinking problem that Bush beat before running for President.
"He was an alcoholic - you have as President an alcoholic!" Chavez said. "I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. He's an alcoholic. He's a sick man, with a complex."
The appearance was arranged to launch this year's campaign to give 100 million gallons of free or low-cost Venezuelan heating oil to poor Americans.
It gave Chavez a chance to speak glowingly of friends like Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who he said is recovering well from intestinal surgery.
At times Chavez sounded as if he was giving one of Castro's famously interminable speeches - reciting agricultural statistics, digressing into the merits of drinking tea made from coca leaves and complaining that windows aren't big enough in modern buildings.
"Buildings are glass cages," he whined. "They don't have windows [that open]. Therefore you have to have the air conditioning on day and night."
Chavez also again waved a copy of a Noam Chomsky book that claims the U.S. is a terrorist state, and spoke glowingly of Americans from Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain to Harry Belafonte and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mayor Bloomberg - in California making an environmental announcement with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - said of Chavez's appearance in the city, "I wouldn't dignify this guy's comments with a response. I think the ways to handle somebody like that is just don't pay any attention to anybody that does something as inappropriate and as untrue."


The Governator agreed, saying, "I don't think he deserves a response. Period."

With Michael McAuliff in Washington, Joe Mahoney in Albany

and Michael Saul in Los Angeles

Rangel tells The News:
I'm outraged by attack on W


Dear Editor:
I want to express my extreme displeasure with statements by the President of Venezuela attacking President Bush in such a personal and disparaging way during his remarks at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday and then again in my Harlem community today at the Mount Olivet church meeting announcing an expanded fuel-oil-for-the-poor program.
George Bush is the President of the United States and represents the entire country. Any demeaning public attack against him is - and should be viewed by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans - as an attack on all of us.
I have defended Mr. Chavez's right to differ with our nation in his vision for the hemisphere and the world, and in the past have sympathized with some of his criticism of this administration's foreign policy. I have certainly been critical of Bush's failed invasion of Iraq. But I draw the line at allowing a foreign leader to come into my country and my community to personally insult my President.
I am particularly outraged because today he used the goodwill that his oil-for-the-poor program has generated in my community to attract an audience whom he exploited by subjecting them to more vitriolic rhetoric, in which he again insulted Bush by calling him an alcoholic and mentally disturbed.


By offering discounted fuel oil in the winter to provide warmth to people in need, Venezuela has won many friends in low-income communities of New York and other states. As long as U.S. companies buy oil from Venezuela without offering any program to reduce its price for the poor, I will be grateful for the generosity of the government of Venezuela. Hugo Chavez's generosity to the poor, however, should not be interpreted as license to personally attack and insult President Bush.

Sincerely,

Charles Rangel
Member of Congress

Originally published on September 22, 2006

Who'd a thunk Rangel would've stuck to doing the right thing. I don't like the congressman, but I like him better now.

New York Daily News - Home - The Big Apple hits back - hard

[tnkr111]

I am not surprised at all, Rangel is a true Red Blooded American. He may be a Democrat, which apparently is enough to make someone in league with the devil here, but he is not too liberal if you really examine closely. Sure he says all the right things, but....don't judge the politician by his party. And what is wrong with what former President Clinton said? He clearly was on point, and acting like a statesman, which he is still expected to be....unlike Jimmy Carter who sympathizes with Chavez knowing he is prone to these types of ridiculous outbursts.

BTW, he is one of 6 members of the HoR with a close family member who is in, or was in the military, for the GWOT.

[Woodmonkey]

Originally Posted by tnkr111

I am not surprised at all, Rangel is a true Red Blooded American. He may be a Democrat, which apparently is enough to make someone in league with the devil here, but he is not too liberal if you really examine closely. Sure he says all the right things, but....don't judge the politician by his party. And what is wrong with what former President Clinton said? He clearly was on point, and acting like a statesman, which he is still expected to be....unlike Jimmy Carter who sympathizes with Chavez knowing he is prone to these types of ridiculous outbursts.

BTW, he is one of 6 members of the HoR with a close family member who is in, or was in the military, for the GWOT.

You're right about Rangel. He's not a bad guy in general and just proved he knows what the loyal opposition is about.

[Scrappy]

Originally Posted by tnkr111

I am not surprised at all, Rangel is a true Red Blooded American. He may be a Democrat, which apparently is enough to make someone in league with the devil here, but he is not too liberal if you really examine closely. Sure he says all the right things, but....don't judge the politician by his party. And what is wrong with what former President Clinton said? He clearly was on point, and acting like a statesman, which he is still expected to be....unlike Jimmy Carter who sympathizes with Chavez knowing he is prone to these types of ridiculous outbursts.

BTW, he is one of 6 members of the HoR with a close family member who is in, or was in the military, for the GWOT.

LOL I was surprised by what clinton said. Nothing wrong with it, but I thought it unlike the man.