"Chavez Hysteria" Watch....

The second post in what will now be an ongoing and unfortunately much-needed series. The first post was here. From Reuters:

The United States on Thursday accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of making new enemies abroad to fire up supporters at home with demagoguery such as saying Washington plans to invade his country.

In a new charge, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, said Chavez relied on confrontation to fuel the nationalist passions of his key support base, the majority poor.

Chavez's strategy is "based on confrontation and conflict, and in order to sustain it over time it requires an ever-increasing search for enemies," the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs told lawmakers.

"And I believe that the anti-American rhetoric by the president is part of a larger effort to get his constituency mobilized," he added.

A politician stirring up nationalist passions and appealing to his "base" via fiery rhetoric about exaggerated threats?

Unthinkable.