President Obama Are You A Wanna Be Dictator?

What better evidence than who Obama chooses to defend in Honduras. He presumes to want to uphold the rule of law but excuse me - defending a thug dictator like Zelaya and rushing to consult with Chavez a man who stole the elections in Venezuela? In his heart of heart all of his actions show that our President is far left of center. He swoons before dictators and other leftist thugs. Read O'Grady's column at WSJ.

When Hugo Chávez makes a personal appeal to Washington for help, as he did 11 days ago, it raises serious questions about the signals that President Barack Obama is sending to the hemisphere's most dangerous dictator.

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya (left) with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
At issue is Mr. Chávez's determination to restore deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya to power through multilateral pressure. His phone call to a State Department official showed that his campaign was not going well and that he thought he could get U.S. help.

This is not good news for the region. The Venezuelan may feel that his aims have enough support from the U.S. and the Organization of American States (OAS) that he would be justified in forcing Mr. Zelaya on Honduras by supporting a violent overthrow of the current government. That he has reason to harbor such a view is yet another sign that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history.

In the three weeks since the Honduran Congress moved to defend the country's constitution by relieving Mr. Zelaya of his presidential duties, it has become clear that his arrest was both lawful and a necessary precaution against violence.

Mr. Zelaya was trying to use mob rule to undermine Honduras's institutions in much the same way that Mr. Chávez has done in Venezuela. But as Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada pointed out in the Los Angeles Times on July 10, Mr. Zelaya's actions were expressly forbidden by the Honduran constitution.

If You're a Dictator Please Stand Up!

• "Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America it is the businessmen." (America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business (AYN RAND essay in Capitalism The Unknown Ideal published 1966).
• "It makes no difference whether government controls allegedly favor the interests of labor or business, of the poor or the rich, of the special class or a special race: the results are the same. The notion that a dictatorship can benefit any one social group at the expense of others is a worn remnant of the Marxist mythology of class warfare, refuted by half a century of factual evidence. All men are victims and losers under a dictatorship; nobody wins - except the ruling clique." (AYN RAND "The Fascist New Frontier").

DICTATORS AROUND THE WORLD (any missing? SEND THEM TO ME.)

1. Kim Jong Il, North Korea, since 1994


2. Than Shwe, Burma, since 1992


3. Hu Jintao, China, since 2002


4. Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe, since 1980


5. Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia, since 1995


6. Theodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea, since 1979


7. Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan, since 1989


8. Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan 1990-2007


9. Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedove, Turkmenistan, since 2007


10. Fidel Castro, followed by Raul Castro, Cuba since 1959


11. King Mswate III, Swaziland, since 1986


12. Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, since 2009


13. Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran, since 1989


14. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan, since 1999


15. Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan, since 1989


16. Isayas Afewerki, Eritrea, since 1991


17. Muammar al Qaddafi, Libya, since 1969


18. Bashar al-Assad, Syria, since 2000


19. Meles zenawi, Ethiopia, since 1995


20. Aleksandr Lukashenka, Belarus, since 1994


21. Choummaly Sayasone, Laos, since 1981


22. Idris Deby, Chad, since 1990