Comrade Hugo in Solidarity With Wall Street Protesters [JWF]

Let's see. They've got Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo and Keith Olbermann on their side. Now it really goes populist with Venezuela's Communist dictator Hugo Chavez.

I'm taking bets on what will die first, this bowel movement on Wall Street or Chavez himself.

The U.S. protests, which began last month in New York and have spread to Tampa, Florida, Seattle and other cities, have mostly been peaceful but sometimes resulted in confrontations. Dozens were arrested and police used pepper spray in New York earlier this week.

"This movement of popular outrage is expanding to 10 cities and the repression is horrible, I don't know how many are in prison now," Chavez said in comments at a political meeting in his Caracas presidential palace shown on state TV.

Chavez, who runs for re-election in a year's time and traditionally ramps up his anti-capitalist rhetoric to try and rally supporters before a vote, also let rip at Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who referred to the "malign socialism" of Cuba and Venezuela in a speech on Friday.

"He's been attacking Venezuela and Cuba, and talking about the malign government of Hugo Chavez. And he has the arrogance to say that God created the United States so the United States can rule the world," Chavez said.

"And that crazy man might be the president of the United States, in elections that are just after ours."

He helpfully reminds us the Soviets won World War II. He also promises a nasty class war.

Need we remind this tool how many of us exercise our Second Amendment rights?

In other news, a protester nearly OD'd Saturday morning. Unfortunately, help arrived.

They are fighting for their rights -- to partay!

The Occupy Wall Street protest has drawn an unwelcome crowd of freeloaders who joined the movement for the sex, drugs and free food -- and they are blending right in.

The opportunists -- ranging from addicts in need of a meal to well-off teens looking to hook up -- have in some cases taken up residence in the demonstrators’ makeshift village in Zuccotti Park, upsetting the movement’s organizers.

“Most of the kids are trust-fund babies. They don’t need to be here,” said Andre, 40, an activist. “I’ve seen some making out, having sex. It doesn’t look good.”

The anything-goes attitude led to a scare early yesterday morning, when a 23-year-old Brooklyn man nearly overdosed after downing a mix of liquor and Robitussin cough syrup.

“He was robo-tripping,” said a woman who knew the man’s first name only, Zachary, and that he had been homeless before camping out in the park starting seven days ago.

None of the protesters sleeping next to Zachary noticed he had stopped breathing or that his lips had turned purple.

An alert passer-by notified cops, and the man was rushed to Downtown Hospital in serious condition.

“If we had not gotten to him when we did, he would have stopped breathing,” a volunteer EMT said.

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posted by Guest Blogger at 10:21 AM

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