CARACAS, Venezuela — Faced with shortages of foods, building materials and other staples, President Hugo Chávez is intensifying state control of the Venezuelan economy through a new wave of takeovers of private companies and the creation of government-controlled ventures with allies like Cuba and Iran.

The moves come just months after voters rejected a referendum to give the president sweeping constitutional power over the economy and public institutions, leading to new accusations that Mr. Chávez is more interested in consolidating power than in fixing Venezuela’s problems. ~nytimes.com

It’s a slippery slope we have so far avoided but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen here. In fact Chavez is betting that it will happen here which is why he wants Obama to win.

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., was among 41 senators who signed a letter condemning radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, and Salazar said Wednesday he would vote for a resolution censuring Limbaugh for “going beyond whatever rights he had to attack soldiers.”

Limbaugh is under attack from MediaMatters.org for comments he made Friday about “phony soldiers” who oppose the war in Iraq.

Limbaugh was “absolutely dead wrong,” Salazar said. ~gjsentinel.com

Democrats believe that “oversight” is their mission in congress which is why reports of Democrats ready, willing, and able to launch investigations of private citizens to figure out how to shut them up with the fairness doctrine is nothing to laugh at.

Others on the Democrat side are pushing ahead with other plans. Rep. Henry Waxman has asked his investigative staff to begin compiling reports on Limbaugh, and fellow radio hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin based on transcripts from their shows, and to call in Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin to discuss the so-called “Fairness Doctrine.”

“Limbaugh isn’t the only one who needs to be made uncomfortable about what he says on the radio,” says a House leadership source. “We don’t have as big a megaphone as these guys, but this all political, and we’ll do what we can to gain the advantage. If we can take them off their game for a while, it will help our folks out there on the campaign trail.” ~spectator.org

Waxman denies it but we know that Democrats want to reinstate the fairness doctrine for this exact reason: to silence dissent. The far left blog, Think Progress, ridicules the “right-wing” for manufacturing this story about Waxman and the fairness doctrine and yet Think Progress advocates using the federal government to shut down conservative talk radio with the Fairness Doctrine. This post is on every single page.

REPORT: The Right Wing Domination Of Talk Radio And How To End It

…Along with other ideas, the report recommends that national radio ownership not be allowed to exceed 5 percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast stations, and local ownership should not exceed more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market. ~thinkprogress.org

Then there’s Wesley Clark who apparently sees some kind of military government in our future, no doubt for the good of the people, in the soon to be workers paradise of the People’s New Republic…

But a few days before the Spectator ran its story I heard former Democratic presidential candidate and Soros fundee retired general Wesley Clark tell MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson that he supports a ratings system for free speech. “I don’t see why there can’t be standards for political discourse,” Clark said, going on to urge the establishment of speech rating system of “A-rated, B-rated and C-rated” and so on. And just by the sheerest of coincidences, a year ago this October 16 the New York Sun reported that Mr. Clark’s political action committee Wes-Pac had received $75,000 from Soros. Clark was quite up front about his objective with talk radio, which interestingly dovetailed with the sentiments attributed to Waxman. Said Clark: “There are standards for propriety in public broadcasting, are there not?…What we need to do is we need to be rating the whole standard of political discourse in America.” Why? When asked by Carlson if he, Clark, was “attempting to censor [Rush Limbaugh] by taking him off the air?” the Soros-funded ex-candidate bluntly replied: “Well, I think he’s [Rush] crossed the line.” ~spectator.org

Normally, I’m willing to overlook the hypocrisy of the liberal elite. If Al Gore and his Hollywood cronies want to fly around on gas-guzzling, atmosphere-polluting private jets while railing against global climate change, I’m willing to overlook it.

But the latest move by globe trotting, hyper-liberal billionaire George Soros borders on being too much. According to papers filed with the SEC, in the fourth quarter of 2006 Soros purchased nearly 2 million shares of … hold your breath … Halliburton. The Halliburton shares reportedly went for an average purchase price of $31.30 a share. That puts Soros’ total investment in Halliburton at around $62.6 million, or about 2 percent of his total portfolio.   ~blog.foreignpolicy.com

It’s a window into the mind of highly partisan leftists. They talk a great deal about the corruptness of corporations and the rich. They demonize ‘wars for oil’ and imagine all kinds of conspiracy theories about how every action of the GOP and GW, the merciful and compassionate, is geared toward making profits for these same corrupt corporations and their ‘plutocracy’. So it’s really no surprise when the rich left cheats, lies, steals, and are generally unabashedly everything they supposedly despise.

So the next time you hear the left talk about how their political enemies are like Goebbels, using propganda to brainwash the public, just think about what they might feel and decide is the optimum tactic to use once they are in power. It’s uncanny. A window into the soul.