El Presidentes

I'm not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything, whether it's on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

-- Obama to Republicans at their retreat.

That's called bipartisanship as defined by el Presidente of the Norte. You Republicans concede and I, el Presidente, will consider negotiating with you. Republicans, as we Tea Party attendees know, are all too willing to negotiate and reap the benefits of ceding to special interests.

Want to see what huge government gets you? Look how well all that nationalization of industries, banks, money and courts have done for Venezuela and el Presidente of Venezuela. The Wall Street Journal is following the Chavez Meltdown.

Venezuela isn't running out of crude. The problem is that Mr. Chávez has expelled or seized the assets of foreign companies capable of properly maintaining the country's fields, including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. It didn't help, either, that in 2002 Mr. Chávez fired thousands of skilled employees of state oil company PdVSA because he didn't like their politics and replaced them with his political cronies.

Then there is the Twitter revolution that has left two students dead and a Chavez declaration that using Twitter, the internet, or text messaging to criticize his regime constitutes acts of terrorism. Then there are the mass marches and the cabinet shakeup. And the shutdown of a television station that refused to air his speeches. Six other stations were cited for refusing to carry Mr Chavez's speeches live as required. They were dropped from cable subscription services. UPDATE: Chavez closed 32 privately-owned radio stations last year, most of which overtly opposed his administration.

It is, of course, the public's fault because they are protesting. And, as Reuters notes, el Presidente de Venezuela is up to the challenge.

"If you're going to head down the path of destabilization, I'm warning you it will yield the opposite result of what you're seeking -- that we may decide to speed up the changes," Chavez, who recently declared himself a Marxist, said in televised comments.

Latin American Herald Tribune has more interest than the New York Times or the Times' owned International Herald-Tribune. "Chavez’s administration has taken over companies in the oil, cement, food, telecommunications, steel, banking and power sectors as part of its drive to usher in “socialism of the 21st century."

While Chavez devalued the currency, he's waging war on "price gougers." He's "closed 1,500 stores in the past two weeks for allegedly raising their prices after the government devalued the currency by half and warned businesses not to hike prices." the Wall Street Journal notes.

That huge government socialism is working out real well, isn't it?