Venezuela: Maduro opens his campaign by saying he talked to Chavez, who is now a bird

Here is Venezuela’s acting president and presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro (in Spanish), along with bird whistles and sound effects,

You can’t make this corny, stupid, silly stuff up:

Maduro Says Chavez as a Bird Blessed His Bid to Head Venezuela

“I felt his spirit,” Maduro said in a televised speech broadcast from Chavez’s former home in the town of Sabaneta. “I felt him there as though he were giving us a blessing, saying to us: ‘Today the battle begins. Onwards to victory. You have our blessing.’”

Maduro may be trying too hard to build a cult of adoration and making people believe that from the grave Chavez directs his people to vote for Maduro, so he’s not paying attention to how crazy that sounds to non-Chavistas.

In case you think Maduro’s little bird doesn’t sound crazy to Latin Americans, I guarantee you that, to other Latin Americans he sounds like he’s flying over the cuckoo’s nest – as we mentioned in yesterday’s podcast (audio starts right away). To Venezuelans, Caracas Chronicles stated,

In the last couple of weeks, it has become increasingly clear that the Maduro campaign has bought a one-way ticket on the Mental Express.

It took no time for Jaime Bayly to riff on it,

Venezuelan political satire website El Chiguirre Bipolar threw the towel and said they can’t come up with a better joke.

So, it’s one of two things:
Either Maduro is so certain that the April 14 election outcome will not be affected by crazy talk,
Or, Maduro’s panicking.

Time will tell.