Obama and Hugo Chavez Behind the Scenes: Obama Grins as The Evil Clown Gives Him an Anti-American Book

It turns out there was another tender moment between Obama and Chavez. In this video, Chavez gives Obama a gift. A book. The real story, however, is what the book is about.

At President Obama's meeting with the heads of South American countries this morning, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stood, walked over to him, and presented him with a copy of "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano.

Obama politely posed for a photograph with Chavez, shook his hand, and accepted the gift.

The book, first published in Spanish in 1971, offers a critique of the consequences of 500 years of European and U.S. colonization of Latin America.

"The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing," the book begins. "Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries passed, and Latin America perfected its role."

Galeano writes that while the era of "lodes of gold" and "mountains of silver" has passed, "our region still works as a menial laborer. It continues to exist at the service of others' needs, as a source of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and foods destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them."

At another point in the book, Galeano writes: "Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others."

The book also criticizes the U.S. for "spreading and imposing family planning. ... In Latin America it is more hygienic and effective to kill future guerillas in the womb that in the mountains or the streets."

Banned in Uruguay and Chile when it was first published, "Open Veins of Latin America" is considered a classic in Latin America.

Obama is being played like a fool. Chavez has twice now used him as a propaganda tool. And Obama just sits there grinning like a clueless doofus. He's an absolute lightweight on the international stage. The world's own personal Urkel.

Can you imagine if Chavez had done that to Ronald Reagan? Reagan would have signed the cover and handed it back, totally embarrassing Chavez.

UPDATE: I thought it might be time to link to this story we posted last year.

HUGO CHAVEZ, COLUMBIAN LEFTIST REBELS, OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS, AND ROGUE URANIUM IN SOUTH AMERICA