[Rummyfan]

Now, for the first time in a country of over 25 million people, a functioning health service is being built. Seventeen million people have been given access to free healthcare for the first time in their lives. Illiteracy has been eliminated. Fifteen million people have been given access to food, medicines and other essential products at affordable prices. A quarter of a million eye operations have been financed to rescue people from blindness. These are extraordinary practical achievements."

Sounds like that other socialist paradise Cuba! Give up freedom for universal literacy and health care!

As for the numbers, in a nation of 25 million, one-quarter million were going blind? Is there something in the water down there?

[oblomov]

>> Is there something in the water down there?

Vitamin B12 deficiency leading to optic nerve neuropathy- because of their socialist economy, Cubans consumed very little milk and meat and resorted to eating cassava to stay alive. Although cassava and similar plant are filling, they lack complete nutririon.

[oblomov]

Sorry for the mispellings in my previous post. I should have added that Cubans resorted to cassava only after running out of grain. A well-designed whole grain and bean diet can provide complete nutrition, but not one centered around cassava...

[lonedawg]

The price of oil will tank sooner or later. Saudi oil minister is already warning OPEC that $70 oil will ultimately prove the undoing of OPEC. Chavez is a socialist scumbag nationalization always leads to political corruption that will eventually catch up with these gigantic pissants.