Borrowing from Venezuela: One, Two, Three Strikes, You're Out!

In Venezuela, opposition students have come up with a clever saying to express their disdain for the megalomaniac Hugo Chavez: "Electricity, Water, Crime, Tas Ponachao," which, borrowing from the Venezuelan love of baseball, is roughly saying "one, two, three strikes, Chavez, you're out!"

The now-viral slogan appears on banners, signs, t-shirts and at baseball games everywhere in Venezuela, protesting the blustering and incompetence of Chavez's "reforms" against the evil bourgeoisie. (Well, maybe not appearing at the home of a businessman on the run, where Chavez's client-looters are happily eating in the kitchen or taking a dip in the swimming pool.)

I think a similar slogan should be applied to Mr. Obama and his party.

As Kimberly Strassel notes in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, after the so-called mainstream media touted Mr. Obama's third major legislative "victory": "There's no longer any question whether this White House can close a sale. Its problem is the country doesn't like what it's selling."

The most recent "finance reform" is an example of looting, exploiting a crisis to make it easier for unions and activists, for example, to crash corporate boards. Which has what to do, exactly, with reforming banking and Wall Street?

The state-supportive media no doubt will tout the historic victories. But the public is not buying it.

I think it's time we in the public coin a similar slogan for our friends in the Democrat Party ("Dem Bums"?), and Mr. Obama in particular, perhaps soon to appear on a t-shirt or at a local baseball game near you: "Stimulus, Healthcare, Banks, You're Out!"

Hugo Chavez is So Predictable

Nowhere is politics more personal than in the mind of the socialist dictator; for whom the well-being of the state equals the well-being of his own ego.

Hugo Chavez's Expropriation Binge

No Need to Violate the First Amendment When You Have Industrial Policy

Just a bit more on the Charles Krauthammer piece mentioned in my previous post. Mr. Krauthammer makes a couple of points. One is about Madisonian norms.

But even more importantly, and what makes his piece so trenchant, is that he is exposing a subtle way to suppress and control the media without explicitly violating the Constitution. It's called industrial policy.

Threaten a network and you are also sending signals to other who might get in the way of a political agenda.

To potential advertisers: we control a lot of money, contracts and life support in bad times. Don't advertise on networks where we find stories unfavorable to our political agenda.

To media rivals: don't follow the disfavored media outlet or we'll do the same to you that we're doing to them.

This is the change we've been waiting for? Co-opting the NEA, ACORN and other government-funded groups for political propaganda purposes? And cutting the financial legs out of the free press if it interferes with our "revolution?"

How very Hugo Chavez-like of Mr. Obama.

No Exit for Three Idiots

The news today is that the new axis powers continue their "cooperation." Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. The political murderer, the "president for life" and the Holocaust denier.

Hosting each others' ships and planes, and talking about "technology transfers."

These three dearly deserve each other. Just like the three characters in Jean Paul Sartre's "No Exit."

Who will screw whom in the end is anyone's guess. But character is destiny.

Chavez a Lifer: Venezuela's a Goner

We are living in strange, dangerous times. With yesterday's news that Hugo Chavez can have his job for life, it's time to short Venezuela. Latin America should prepare for refugees.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to emasculate itself with massive deficit spending, and the promise of more interventionist regulation and spending to come.

The world, it seems, is on a path to fiscal instability and the increasing politicization of economies. Willingly, through the popular vote.

Madness.