The government of Venezuela swears the someone tried to blow Nicolas Maduro last night. Supposedly, a drone attacked him while he was giving a speech about how he's planning to fix the country's messed up economy. I've seen the footage that was shot before supposed attack and I'll Maduro a B for effort and a D for the actual production

Let's say that you're in charge of a country that, because of a huge supply of oil, has the potential be one of the richest in the world. And let's say that your citizens are starving in the streets, inflation has gotten so bad that your money is literally worth less than the money that it's printed on, and basically you're one of the most hated leaders in the world. Now, you could try to fix it all with empty Marxist rhetoric. That's what Maduro tried. But, slogans can only take you so far. When rhetoric fails, what better way to rally your dying citizens than with a phony assassination attempt?

Amazingly, no one was injured in the "attempt." Certainly not Maduro, who now gets to brag about how he's "survived" a cowardly attack by his enemies. Maduro is already announcing that, because of the attempt, there are going to be new crackdowns and even less civil liberties. Of course, the world has a long and proud history of "false flag" operations, outrages against the State that were actually specifically planned by the government. This is hardly the first time that it's happened. It's just most dictators can at least pull it off with a little panache. Maduro couldn't even accomplish that.

As someone who has friends and family in South America, I hope that Venezuela and the entire continent will soon be delivered from dictators and corrupt ideologues.