Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is dead at the age of 58, Vice President Nicolas Maduro confirmed Tuesday. Already in delicate condition after undergoing cancer surgery in December, took a turn for the worse Monday when he began suffering from “a new, severe infection.” Maduro called in the nation’s top leaders Tuesday and announced on national television that a U.S. Embassy attaché, Col. David Delmonaco, was being expelled for “spying” on Venezuela’s military and planning to destabilize the country. The expulsion of a second U.S. Air Force attaché was announced by Foreign Minister Elias Jaua on Tuesday.

Associated Press:

During more than 14 years in office, his leftist politics and grandiose style polarized Venezuelans. The barrel-chested leader electrified crowds with his booming voice, and won admiration among the poor with government social programs and a folksy, nationalistic style.

His opponents seethed at the larger-than-life character who demonized them on television and ordered the expropriation of farms and businesses. Many in the middle class cringed at his bombast and complained about rising crime, soaring inflation and government economic controls.

Chavez used his country's vast oil wealth to launch social programs that included state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programs. Poverty declined during Chavez's presidency amid a historic boom in oil earnings, but critics said he failed to use the windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the country's economy.

Inflation soared and the homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world.

In the battles waged at home and abroad, Chavez captivated his base by championing his country's poor.

"This is the path: the hard, long path, filled with doubts, filled with errors, filled with bitterness, but this is the path," Chavez told his backers in 2011. "The path is this: socialism."

Chavez named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his chosen successor just three days before his final surgery.

In possibly his most disturbing interview to date, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tells Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured.

While discussing reducing the federal debt, Romney explains that his first step will be to repeal Obamacare, and repeating his often claimed lie that this will knock $100 billion annually off the budget. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has found that repealing the health care law will increase the federal budget deficit by more than $100 billion in the first decade and more than a trillion dollars in the next decade. The CBO also found that 30 million Americans would remain uninsured without the Affordable Care Act.

Pelley then asks Romney "Does the government have a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million Americans who don't have it today?"

With absolutely no hint of emotion, or human compassion whatsoever, Romney tells Scott Pelley, "Well we do provide care for people who don't have insurance. If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care.
And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

I don't think Romney even blinks as he finishes this portion of this extended interview:

Pelley: That's the most expensive way to do it.

Romney: Well the--

Pelley: In an emergency room.

Romney: Different, again, different states have different ways of doing that. Some provide that care through clinics. Some provide the care through emergency rooms. In my state, we found a solution that worked for my state. But I wouldn't take what we did in Massachusetts and say to Texas, "You've got to take the Massachusetts model."

Some states might have clinics? So if you're having a heart attack after business hours you do sit in your apartment and die? Why such a drastic change in Romney's position on health care?

When asked in a March 2010 interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" whether he believes in universal health care coverage, Romney said, "Oh, sure!"

"Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way," he said. See the video below:

During an interview with Glenn Beck in 2007 (See the video below), Romney said that the individual mandate, the centerpiece of ObamaCare upheld by the Supreme Court today as a tax, was the “ultimative conservatism.” Romney said people going to the hospital and “getting free care” was a “form of socialism.”

See what a gigantic flip-flop this is? Now Romney is endorsing socialism? But Romney's version of socialism is unacceptable, as it leaves millions with no health care at all unless it's an emergency, and even then most hospitals have varying degrees of how much care you'll receive. But the 47% of the U.S. who are just moochers should just shut up and be glad with whatever get, isn't that right Mr. Romney?

This may be the spookiest political ad ever: Chuck Norris, along with his wife Gena, have offered a dire warning to America, claiming that Americans face "socialism," (*Gasp!*) or something worse," and "1,000 years of darkness" if President Obama is re-elected for a second term in November.

In the Youtube video above, Norris and his wife warn of a "growing concern" that the America we know can be "lost forever" if Obama is re-elected.

“If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack,” Norris says. “We’re at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don’t change the course in which our country is headed.”

Gena Norris then cites the statistic that in 2008 more than 30 million Evangelical Christians stayed home on Voting Day and Obama won. *Gasp!*

She then quotes the late President Ronald Reagan, "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into 1,000 years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

Oh, Chuck and Gena? The name of that speech you quoted, "A Time for Choosing," also known as "The Speech," was presented during the 1964 U.S. presidential election campaign by future president Ronald Reagan on behalf of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.

Goldwater lost.The world did not end, or even plunge into 1,000 years of darkness.

Drama queens.

What would a world look like that had a culture and an economic system that placed human need above corporate greed, and how do we bring that world into being?

Dennis Trainor, Jr., the writer and director of "American Autumn: an occudoc," does not care what we call this new world. “Call it Socialism, if you are not afraid of buzzwords, call it Real Democracy Now, call it Chunky-Monkey-Cherry Garcia for all I care. All I know is the world needs to change radically, it needs to change dramatically, and it needs to change fast. This documentary is an invitation for the viewer to participate in that positive change.”

Shot on the front lines and meeting spaces of the Occupy Movement in NYC, Boston, and Washington, D.C. from the earliest days through the end of January 2012 and written, directed and produced by activist, writer and filmmaker Dennis Trainor, Jr. "American Autumn: an Occudoc" is an inside-looking-out view of the Occupy Movement.

I see some friendly familiar faces in this clip, Michael Moore, Bernie Sanders, and Lee Camp. Enjoy the trailer, the film is scheduled for release in June.