Hugo Chavez

George Will: Is Obama Administration Acting Like A Northern Hemisphere Venezuela?

June 21, 2010

george will 150x150 George Will: Is Obama Administration Acting Like A Northern Hemisphere Venezuela?Congressman Joe Barton should have listened to George Will before making his point about the Obama administration’s “shakedown” of BP.

Unlike Barton, Will doesn’t apologize to BP. Instead he clearly condemns BP’s abominable safety record. He makes the point that Barton tried to make, i.e. that Obama is using raw political power to confiscate $20 billion from a public corporation and even may make BP responsible for lost wages from Obama’s six month moratorium on deep water drilling.

Will makes the comparison to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez who has frequently used government power to intimidate and expropriate businesses in Venezuela.

Will’s point is that we have laws and a judicial process to deal with BP.

The popular objection to this argument is that the legal process takes time and many Americans are suffering now. Nobody denies that. But it is adherence to laws and following due process that protects all Americans from abuse of government power. Some public opinion polls suggest that a majority of Americans support Obama’s bullying of BP. They need to understand that allowing any president to throw out our laws and legal processes for a shakedown at the White House, because we believe in the cause, creates a precedent that the government can then use to justify other threats against businesses and private citizens.

America has maintained a greater degree of freedom than any other country in the world for more than 200 years because it has adhered to Constitutional rules. Yes, this process has been imperfect and there have been other transgressions. But no violation of Constitutional government can be more serious than the Executive branch with its police and military power ignoring legal processes.

This is a key moment for the Tea Party movement which has appealed to popular opinion by focusing on Constitutional principles. What will Tea Party supporters advocate when popular opinion and Constitutional principles clash? The right approach is to stick with the Constitution and our legal processes and educate Americans on why this is so important. Hugo Chavez’ overthrow of Latin America’s oldest democracy is an appropriate case study that should serve as a warning to those who believe that anger at BP justifies ignoring the legal process.

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Copenhagen Farce: Obama Loses His Cool Amidst An Anti-American Summit

December 18, 2009

15504205 Copenhagen Farce: Obama Loses His Cool Amidst An Anti American Summit“…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” – William Shakespeare

The Global Warming Summit in Copenhagen ended with a day in which Chinese Prime Minister Wen snubbed President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obama then crashed a meeting between the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. He tried to play the savior of the planet by announcing a non-binding agreement and left before a final vote because of – I am not making this up – an approaching record snow storm in Washington. Oh, and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez announced that Barack Obama is the devil, an honor he previously bestowed on George W. Bush.

No comedian could make this up. The only thing missing was Al Gore reciting poetry somewhere in the background.

The British paper The Independent reports:

“At an emergency meeting convened at the Bella Center this morning, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown assembled 26 heads of state in an attempt to revive a deal. But China’s Premier Wen Jiabao did not attend and was replaced by vice foreign minister He Yafei.

This afternoon, the US president and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton called another meeting with China, but were snubbed again when only three low-level Chinese delegates arrived.

According to a high level source, the US president clearly regarded Premier Wen’s absence as a major diplomatic insult, and snapped: ‘It would be nice to negotiate with somebody who can make political decisions.’”

ABC’s Jack Tapper continues the story:

Officials say President Obama was frustrated. The conference was in complete chaos.

At about 730 pm Denmark time – the president was supposed to have left an hour before — he learned that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, with whom he was supposed to meet, was meeting with the leaders of India, South Africa, and Brazil – the main players holding up any sort of political agreement.

The president heard about this and said he wanted to go to the meeting.

“Four against one,” an official said to the president.

“No problem,” he replied.

A senior administration official says the president “barged into the meeting,” where he joined China’s Wen, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma.

The reporters’ pool note from that time said that President Obama walked into the room and called out from the door, “Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me? Are you ready?”

They talked for roughly 45 minutes and emerged with a non-binding political accord.

Hugo Chavez seems to have a problem with smelling sulfur when he speaks at the same location as a US President. Here his Chavez in Copenhagen today:

Three years ago at the United Nations Chavez had similar words for President George W. Bush:

When will President Obama realize that, as President of the United States, he too is the target of Anti-American hatred? Going around the world apologizing for the “evils” committed by the United States prior to January 20, 2009 just makes him and America look weak and emboldens America’s enemies.

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Hugo Chavez, Karl Marx, Capitalism and Copenhagen

December 17, 2009

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez identifies the true agenda of the Climate Change summit in Copenhagen. Quoting “el gran Karl Marx”, Chavez’ states to thunderous applause that Capitalism is the true enemy. We should thank Chavez for bringing clarity to Copenhagen and making it clear that the goal of the global warming cult is restricting freedom and increasing government control on a global scale.

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Is Obama Administration a Threat to Free Speech?

November 8, 2009

As criticism of Obama increases, the administration’s attacks against Fox News, talk radio and the US Chamber of Commerce become increasingly ominous. We should pay attention and publicize the administration’s statements particularly those by Mark Lloyd, Barack Obama’s “media diversity czar.”

Lloyd is no friend of free speech and has sympathies for Hugo Chavez’ policies of suppressing opposition. In a 2006 book he stated the following:

It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.

He likes Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez’s approach to free speech:

In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela.

The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled – worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government – worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country.

How far will Obama go if opposition to his policies threatens his Congressional majorities in 2010 and his re-election in 2012?

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