(WMR) -- House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi called Hugo Chavez a "thug" for the Venezuelan President's "diablo" remarks about George W. Bush.

Pelosi was speaking at a Washington news conference last Thursday when she denounced Chavez as a thug and said he demeaned himself and Venezuela. Pelosi seems to forget that it is a thug who tried to oust Chavez in a bloody 2002 coup, a thug who has invaded and killed tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, a thug who gave Israel the green light to pulverize Lebanon and kill over a thousand civilians, and a thug who wants to torture prisoners in U.S. custody.

And while Pelosi was calling Chavez a thug, he was busy negotiating the sale of cheap heating oil to the people of Harlem. When was the last time Ms. Pelosi did anything to provide cheap commodities to the poor?

Perhaps Ms. Pelosi is a bit confused by the term "thug." Her father, Thomas D'Alessandro, broadcast wartime radio messages to Italy exhorting Italians to rise up against Benito Mussolini.

An ally in the program to get Italians to revolt was none other than Mafia don Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who, after the war, was paroled from a federal prison and deported to Italy where he continued to run the Mafia in exile.

D'Alessandro was elected Mayor of Baltimore in 1947 -- a time when Luciano's mob had a virtual free reign in the port of Baltimore. It would appear that Ms. Pelosi has forgotten that her mobbed up dear old dad dealt with thugs on a routine basis. Perhaps she should remember that the next time she has an urge to call a democratically-elected real populist leader (Pelosi does not know the meaning of the term "populist") a "thug."

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