It is odd that one doesn’t hear, see, or read more on this:

Among the two most alarming revelations is the already completed sale and delivery, to Venezuela by Russia, of nearly 2,000 advanced, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles capable of hitting aircraft as high as 19,000 feet. Equally and perhaps more alarming is an October agreement between Iran and Venezuela. The agreement establishes a joint ground-to-ground missile base on Venezuelan soil and calls for the sharing of missile technology and the training of technicians and officers. In addition, Venezuela may use the missiles as it chooses for “national needs” and in case of “emergency.” Several types of missiles will be deployed, giving Venezuela the ability to strike targets throughout South and Central America and throughout the U.S.
The dangers arising from the Marxist, cult-of-personality rule of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez are many. These weapons are only the largest and most destructive purchased or finagled by Chavez. He has also purchased an enormous number of Russian assault rifles — the real thing, fully automatic military rifles, not the non-existent “assault weapons” of gun control imaginations and press releases — and related weapons and ammunition.

A hostile dictator to the south — not far beyond our increasingly anarchic southern neighbor — is arming himself to the teeth, and coverage thereof appears somewhat less intensive than the media’s handling of Lindsay Lohan’s latest doings. Certainly, the White House doesn’t give the impression of being concerned.
One suspects that (to some degree) folks in the mainstream media and administration are sympathetic to such arguments as I hear from time to time in the comments sections — namely, that a leftist dictator who’s spent the last decade consolidating his power has a right to arm his country in response the U.S. hegemony. Not for no reason did Chavez cheer Americans’ unserious, deluded act of electing Barack Obama.