Obama And Hugo Chavez, Two Peas In A Pod

So, what do Barack Obama, the charismatic leader of the U.S., and Hugo Chavez, the charismatic leader of Venezuela, have in common? Many things, it turns out:

- Both have a most agreeable and telegenic demeanor.

- Both are on television repeatedly and relentlessly, as inescapable as Reality TV show commercials.

- Both of them use the power of government to squelch dissent and remake society into a Socialist paradise.

- Both apparently believe that the United States is evil.

- Neither of them trusts their citizenry.

Let’s take President Obama for starters. Three different efforts by the Obama Administration to invade your privacy and intimidate you into silence have surfaced in recent days. Taken together, they are creeping OffHisMeds out, and have the potential to be the most Stalinesque abrogation of individual freedoms in the short history of our Republic. All are targeted at ordinary citizens, and collectively they do away with all or portions of the 4th, 5th and 9th Amendments in the Bill of Rights.

But hey, you don't need to take my word for it; not when you can rely on Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Senator John Cornyn, and well, the Obama Administration. Strange bedfellows indeed:

1) You may already have seen the Glenn Beck video on Youtube documenting the attempt by your government to steal your identity via government websites. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAOBlqUqUZ8

The jist is that if you log onto cars.gov to inquire about the “Cash For Clunkers” program, the Feds will claim your computer and all its contents as government property. Strangest of all, it’s not a Presidential declaration, it’s not an act of Congress, and it sure as hell isn't a decision by the Supreme Court; in fact, it was not presented to get any public scrutiny at all. No, it’s an addendum tucked away on an obscure page of a government website having nothing whatsoever to do with Constitutional matters.

Take away Beck's enjoyable hype and partisanship, though, and you find that absolutely nothing at all changes about the content of the story. Straight up reportage, made all the more poignant by the fact that the Mainstream Media ignored it.

2) That's just the tip of the Obama Big Brother iceberg, though. The Administration is also maneuvering for permanent warrantless wiretaps on virtually all computer users in the U.S.A. Check out this article from 8-11-09:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/6567904.html

This article details attempts by the Feds to cancel a holdover exemption from the Bush Administration that prevents them from keeping a history of all of your visits to government websites. It goes beyond that, though. The Feds are also angling to have access to any and all information recorded by ISPs (Internet Service Providers). The Obama Administration has specifically partnered with Google, who already keeps an 18 month record of your every Internet transaction, including all websites visited and the nature of the Searches you've done; and remember, Google also keeps an archive of all of your G-Mail, even if you delete it.

This story comes right from the Washington Post. Try as I might, I couldn't find a Republican with any fingerprints on this story. But I did try.

3) The latest is a direct effort to intimidate citizens and stifle free speech by implementing a "Snitch" program. Linda Douglass, communications director for Obama’s Office of Health Reform, is quoted as saying “If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.” Read Newt Gingrich's article and John Cornyn's letter to Obama:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6572050.html

The attempt to commission private citizens to snitch out their fellow citizens will no doubt be spun by Obamites as harmless, but that's going to be a hard sell seeing as how they've spent the last few weeks demonizing these same protesters. The Snitch program appears to be the natural progression of their attempts to stifle debate, especially considering that their original objective was to pass Health Care reform before their could be any. The Protesters crammed Obama's fast-track plan down his throat. Snitch@whitehouse.gov looks like payback.

It also recalls the worst practices of petty dictators like Hugo Chavez, Omar Torrijos and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

All of these Big Brother maneuvers by Obama are breath-taking not only because they are coordinated, but because each is so pervasive as well. After all, it's near-impossible these days to avoid government websites, and it's impossible to avoid ISPs such as Google unless you simply don't want to use the Internet. Couple these two initiatives with a Snitch program, and you've got the makings of a Police State.

Most compelling of all, there is no plausible reason to enact such programs for the good of the people. Collecting this data would serve the government for one purpose, and one purpose only: to develop a security dossier on each and every web-crawling citizen in the United States. It's kind of ironic that Obama only finds this offensive when it comes to foreign terrorists, isn't it?

These programs are trial balloons, of course. In classic Democrat weasel fashion, each action can be made to appear to be less than what it is, and if there's no uproar over wholesale Identity Theft by the Democrat Party now, they'll be able to refer back to this period a year from now and legitimately claim: "hey, where was the outrage in 2009 when these steps were first taken?” Of course, a compliant Mainstream Media, by failing to give the stories their due, helps ensure that they slip under the radar, just as did the theft of thousands of FBI files on prominent Republicans by the Clinton Administration in the 90s.

After that, these programs will become the norm, and as is the case with so many other Democrat outrages that get a franchise (Social Security comes to mind), they'll be protected by the Bureaucracy that really runs this country, 90% of which are Democrats.

Speaking of which, isn't it amazing that the reaction of this same Mainstream Media - who would have called for impeachment had Bush done a fraction of these things - has been to yawn, roll over and continue to spoon with Obama, with nary a discouraging word? Thank God for the Pajamahadeen. The tireless Conservative blogging community is keeping track of this stuff, and giving these stories the circulation necessary to undo their evil.

Our President has much in common with Hugo Chavez. In addition to the police state tactics against individuals, there's the nationalization of key industries, the co-opting and intimidation of independent media outlets, the gargantuan and unsustainable spending programs, the outright hostility to Capitalism, and a foreign policy whose sole purpose seems to be the demonization of the United States. And while Chavez is well along with his plans for a secret police to further squelch dissent, Obama has taken only the initial steps with these three programs, no doubt the precursors to the "national police force" he promised during the presidential campaign.

All that said, I'm OK with Obama continuing to emulate Hugo Chavez, I really am, even up to and including scheduling himself for five hours of primetime television each week with a show along the lines of Chavez's "Hello President". With every totalitarian impulse, our Blunderer-In-Chief reveals not only himself to the American people, but the Democrat Party as well.

And the picture ain't pretty.