Don't buy the distractions!

It's the stuff that doesn't make the headlines that we have to watch!

Yesterday Obama tried to impress us all with his hundred million dollar budget cut demand. For once, the media rightfully nailed that one as a load of crap, quickly pointing out that it was such a miniscule sliver of the total spending that it was completely ridiculous. Having failed in that attempt, they turned the subject to a longtime left-wing favorite: the possiblility of prosecuting former Bush administration officials for torture. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. It will never happen. It's just designed to make a lot of noise to distract from other issues.

The recent South American trip is one of those issues. Having legitimized both Chavez and Ortega, the administration now fears the backlash of his limp wristed international performance. Already Chavez is capitalizing on Obama's outreach program.

“I am coming back from Trinidad and Tobago, from the Americas Summit where, without a doubt, the position that Venezuela and its government has always defended, especially starting 10 years ago, of resistance, dignity, sovereignty and independence has obtained in Port of Spain, one of the biggest victories of our history,” Chavez said.

“It would seem that the changes that started in Venezuela in the last decade of the 20th century have begun to reach North America,” he added.

Chavez made the comments Sunday to a crowd gathered for the 199th Commemoration of the Independence Declaration of Venezuela.

“In one year we will be celebrating 200 years of ‘April 19,’ the day that ... initiated this revolution that is underway 200 years later at the forefront of the people of our America, at the forefront of change, at the forefront of a new world, at the forefront of a new century that will construct Bolivarian socialism,” said Chavez.

What was it you said about that handshake again, Obama? Oh, yeah...

“It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having polite conversation with Mr. Chavez, we are endangering the strategic interest of the United States,” Obama told reporters.

“You would be would be hard pressed to paint a scenario in which the U.S. interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela,” he added.

I've got your scenario right here, dimwit.

Venezuelan opposition to the Chavez administration criticized President Obama on Sunday for warming up to Chavez before demonstrating concern about Venezuela’s democracy, apporrea.org, a Venezuelan news outlet reported.

“The president’s (Chavez) authoritarianism, which grows by the day, has to be discussed,” Milos Alcalay, former Venezuelan ambassador to the U.N., who resigned in 2004 due to differences with Chavez, told aporrea.org.

The U.S. needs to talk to “the opposition, church representatives and others, who are really concerned about the democracy in Venezuela,” added Alcalay.

According to the U.S. State Department and other official government sources, the Venezuelan government has been guilty of numerous human rights violations under Chavez's rule.

“Politicization of the judiciary and official harassment of the political opposition and the media characterized the human rights situation during the year,” said the State Department's Country Report on Human Rights in Venezuela for 2008 that was released last month.

The report credits the Chavez regime with unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, discrimination based on political grounds, widespread corruption at all levels of government, official intimidation and attacks on the independent media.

“According to HRW [Human Rights Watch], ‘Government officials have removed scores of detractors from the career civil service, purged dissidents employees from the national oil company, denied citizens access to social programs based on their political opinions, and denounced critics as subversives deserving of discriminatory treatment," says the State Department report.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service also outlined human rights concerns in Chavez's Venezuela.

“Under the populist rule of President Hugo Chavez … Venezuela has undergone enormous political changes, with a new constitution and unicameral legislature, and a new name for the country, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” states a Feb. 5, 2009 CRS report.

“U.S. officials and human rights organizations have expressed concerns about the deterioration of democratic institutions,” the report adds, “and threats to freedom of expression under President Chavez, who has survived several attempts to remove him from power.”

Last February, Venuzuelan voters approved a constitutional amendment that eliminates presidential term limits, thus allowing Chavez to run the country for an unlimited succession of 6-year terms as long as he can win a majority of the vote in a Venezuelan election.

And now yet another cruel dictator can point to the buffoon in the White House as a friend. Michael Ramirez sums it up quite nicely.

Need more proof? Bloomberg has this:

Venezuelan opposition leader and Maracaibo Mayor Manuel Rosales, who was scheduled to appear in court yesterday on corruption charges, has left the country and is seeking political asylum in Peru.

The mayor is being “politically persecuted,” said his wife, Eveling Rosales, in comments broadcast by CNN’s Spanish- language channel. Manuel Rosales, 56, lost the 2006 presidential election to President Hugo Chavez.

“The fundamental problem is that there’s no credibility in the judicial system, which is a system that’s been completely politicized,” Leopoldo Lopez, a member of Rosales’s Un Nuevo Tiempo party and former mayor of the Caracas borough of Chacao, said in a telephone interview. “This is retaliation and selective repression.”

Opposition leaders say Rosales’s case stems from Chavez’s reaction to his opponents winning elections in the country’s biggest cities and states in November, when Rosales took the mayor’s office in Maracaibo, the country’s second-biggest city. In addition to Rosales, former Defense Minister Raul Baduel, who turned on Chavez in 2007, has been detained in connection with a corruption probe, prosecutors said.

Bad things happen when you oppose Dear Leader.

This is what happens when silly little boys play dress up. Is there anyone in government with the guts to tell this guy what a complete ass he's making of himself and how deeply he is damaging the interests of our country? If not, it's going to be a long, humiliating four years.