You're Secondary in Your Children's Hearts, American Parents

The Young President arrived in New Orleans on Wednesday to snarl traffic, raise campaign funds, and to define his position on government's role in our lives during a speech he delivered to the Urban League convention. He actually uttered the words in quotations. The AP reports:

Obama's message was comprehensive, but he ultimately did not promise anything specific. He spoke of community policing strategies and mental health centers, or programs that steer people away into safe activities instead of gang violence, of ensuring that parents and teachers step in to fill a hole in a child's heart "that government alone cannot fill."

Parents should step up to fill a hole in their children's hearts that government alone cannot fill?!?!" Seriously?!?! Did those words come from the mouth of Barack Obama or Hugo Chavez? Oh. That's what I thought. To repeat the obvious, we simply cannot give this guy a second, lame duck term in the White House.

Another of Those Posts that My Mother Would Disapprove

Wouldn't you just love to be a fly on the wall of the hospital room where this picture was taken!  Hugo and those Krazy Kastro Boyz!  Ol' Hugo was even sporting his favorite track suit!

Being southern, my Mama always admonished me to hold my tongue if I couldn't say something nice about someone. Ordinarily, being southern myself, I heed that admonition.  But, there are just some folks that set my tongue to wagging, and Hugo Chavez is one of them.

Pepper forwarded me this link in an email this afternoon:

"From all available reports, Hugo Chavez is in critical condition in a hospital in Cuba. The Venezuelan communist dictator was taken to Cuba several weeks ago for an emergency surgery regarding pelvic swelling, which has led many to speculate that he is dealing with prostate cancer.

In the irony of ironies, Hugo Chavez was faced with the decision to have to leave his own nation, and the health care system that was supposed to be an example for other nations, to receive care from another questionable health care system in Cuba."

In the "Subject" line, he titled the email, "Apparently God Has a Sense of Humor."

It would appear so, indeed.

In my reply I suggested that he get together a group of retired Blackwater guys, invade Venezuela, and storm the golf courses to take them back from "the people" before Chavez comes home.  I haven't heard from him in awhile.  Hmmm, I wonder.  I'd better go check whether any of the jungle camo uniforms are missing . . . .

Venezuela Kills Off Its Next-to-Last Functioning Brain Cell

Today I have offered up a genuine prayer of thanksgiving.  I am truly thankful that I do not live in Venezuela.

What are they thinking?!?!  Who among the Venezuelan citizenry cannot appreciate that by giving him another decree power the Congress has set Chavez up as a despot -- a dictator with royalty envy -- before the opposition gains a foothold in January.  And who in his right mind could possibly want to achieve such a thing?!?! 

Next they'll change his title to Emperor.  We'll just have to call him Napoleon "Dynamite" Chavez.

Seriously.  He has declared the banking industry to be a "public service," has expropriated private property without compensation, and is now turning his eye toward regulation of the internet.  AP reports:

The law to grant Chavez decree powers, the fourth such legislation of his nearly 12-year presidenccy [sic], also will allow him to unilaterally enact measures involving telecommunications, the banking system, information technology, the military, rural and urban land use, and the country's "socio-economic system."




Among the planned decrees already announced, Chavez intends to increase the value-added tax, now 12 percent, to raise funds for coping with the disaster caused by weeks of heavy rains. The government is erecting tents to house thousands left homeless and is accelerating public housing construction.

But, NappyDyn doesn't view this latest power grab as setting himself up as a Cuban-style dictator.  He just wants benevolent control of Venezuela's entire "socio-economic system."  More details at Fausta's Blog.

I guess the denizens of the Star Wars saga didn't see it that way at first, either.

We'd better watch our backs until 2012.  I can think of someone else who might like to add a laurel wreath headpiece to his Nobel medal via appropriation of the banking industry, the energy industry, the healthcare system, the . . . .

Oops.

Hugo Chavez: Economist and Unfortunate Fashionista

Not only do we have to worry about Dear Ol' Leader Kim Jung Il's threats, now the A.P. reports that Venezuelan "president" Hugo Chavez is rattling his very own saber. He told an adoring throng yesterday, "If there is any armed aggression against Venezuela from Colombian territory or anywhere supported by the Yankee empire, we . . . would suspend shipments of oil to the United States! . . . . We wouldn't send another drop of oil to its refineries, not a single drop more!"

Of course, that brutal embargo would send Venezuela's "thriving" economy further into the tank and could have the unexpected consequence of jump-starting our own American oil industry -- you know, that oil industry that's now languishing around in the in the Obama Gulf Doldrums.

Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing after all -- winter's just around the corner, and it should be heating oil season by the time election day rolls around. A nice shiver might shake some sense into some of those enviro-nut moratorium fans who can't see the energy forest for the oil spill tree.

Insofar as our neighbors to the south go, I'm not sure who's the bigger nutcake -- Hugo, Daniel O. who also rattled a saber at Colombia today, or those Krazy Kastro Boyz (now that Honduras has finally thrown Zelaya out of office).

One thing I do know -- I hope neither Michelle nor the Young President hooks up with Hugo's fashion designer. The resulting Obamaesque Imperial trappings and accouterments could be frightening. But really sparkly -- we could see the Young Prez sporting his Nobel on a fancy sash like Hugo's! And maybe his "necklace" could be made from the bottle caps from his beer summits!

Based on her fashion-past, though, I fear to contemplate what Michelle might dare to wear.

What is it with the belts nowhere near her natural waist?


And the horizontal stripes where horizontal stripes don't belong?


Okay -- I'll give her the see-through top, but . . . .

Egad.