Guatemala 109 Venezuela 76

Guatemala
leads the Venz in the vote for a Security Council seat. I was IO/UNP officer in the State Dept when one sad excuse of a country sent a letter to "Cyprus" [sic] Vance to request that it become a UNSC candidate. The US used to get its candidates on the SC with no big problem except when renegades like Cuba got on, and in that case, the vote was usually brokered with the US getting four extremely friendly countries on board if a bomb-thrower was involved.

The amazing thing was that the obnoxious little cacique from Caracas visited dozens of countries promising mucho dinero, I'm sure, to buy votes as he does in his corrupt homeland.

My guess is that Guatemala will get in on the second round after the countries who promised the Venz they would vote for them on the first round take the second to vote the way they want to.

The UN is a pretty squalid place, and Germany and Japan should be on the UNSC because of their importance, dropping the UK and France, in a perfect world. But the UK are our loyal allies and the French occasionally are helpful---so the beat goes on.

Can you imagine how the hate-America MSM would be trumpeting a Venezualan accession to the SC as a US [read Bush] defeat?

As Thomas Sowell so wisely notes, in the USA, the Fourth Estate is the Fifth Column.