Here Comes Santa Chavez

Well, at least one international leader is looking out for the less fortunate this holiday season; via the Boston Globe (this one's for you, Scratch):

While most of Congress was spending an August recess tending to local constituents, Representative William D. Delahunt was in Caracas, sitting down to a four-hour, one-on-one dinner conversation with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, one of the Bush administration's most ardent critics.

That meeting -- unusual for a sitting member of Congress and a head of state so critical of the White House -- sparked negotiations that led to the official announcement scheduled for today: A US subsidiary of a Venezuelan-owned company will provide 12 million gallons of discounted home heating oil to Massachusetts consumers and organizations serving the poor.
Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat who is emerging as one of his party's leading voices in Latin American affairs, said he was simply trying to smooth strained US-Venezuelan relations while helping low-income people in his home state.
[...]
Asked if he was subverting State Department policy toward Chávez, Delahunt said, ''I don't work for Condoleezza Rice. I don't report to the State Department. I report to the people who elected me in the state of Massachusetts. I belong to an independent branch of government."
[...]
Bernardo Álvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to the United States, said in an interview that Chávez now wants to help low-income people in the United States.

''We want a united and prosperous America -- the whole Americas," Álvarez said. ''This is our way of showing our friendship and mutual cooperation between the US people and the Venezuelan people."

Chávez has been less cooperative and friendly toward Bush, calling him a ''crazy man" and an ''assassin." When Bush was in Latin America earlier this month, Chavez derided him at anti-Bush rally and declared ''dead" the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, a Bush administration priority.
[...]
While the US government has a shaky diplomatic relationship with Venezuela, the two countries have substantial economic ties. Venezuela is the United States's third-largest Latin American trading partner and its 13th largest worldwide. And CITGO, the Venezuelan subsidiary that will distribute the discount heating oil, has a historic place in Boston: Its giant sign in Kenmore Square has been a city landmark for four decades.