Obama isn't Bush; He's Nixon

Yes, children: Nixon was the horrible Boogeyman president with which your hippie babysitters used to terrify you into good behavior: "Go to sleep, or Tricky Dick will send the CIA after you!"

He went after everybody who opposed him, which by early 1972 was pretty much everybody in the country with a functioning brain and conscience. His illegal, unconstitutional and inexcusable use of federal government power to terrorize, arrest and ruin the lives of anti-war activists (including veterans), college students, labor unions, liberals and Democrats of all stripes awed even vicious tyrants like Baby Doc Duvalier.

He was forced to resign, but never made to answer for his crimes. Which is why presidents ever since have been free to emulate him.

From the NY Times:

A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

Well, aren't we relieved that we elected a president who would never do anything like that?

From Wonkette:

It is still 2006? No, it is 2011! And your mysterious Bush administration Obama administration is concerned about the terrible presence of peaceniks and hippies roaming freely in American cities, because 9/11 was a hippie thing. So what is going on? ‘We just killed that pro-war bin Laden guy,’ Non-Partisan Obama said, ‘so we have to be fair and go after some anti-war activists now.’ There are two sides of the terror coin, after all: the people who want to kill you and the people who dislike the United States being at war all the time. Keep tabs on them both. Hell, just keep tabs on everyone. Everyone is now a terrorist.

Weirdest part: how did the FBI know who to go after when they wanted to perform raids? THEY LOOKED THROUGH OBAMA’S PHONE BOOK. Haha, there is some ironic proof he is a secret socialist terrorist. Some of those targeted are union organizers and activists Obama had contact with in Chicago. Are you sure you want to volunteer for the Obama re-election campaign?

From the Washington Post:

The search was part of a mysterious, ongoing nationwide terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor organizers.

The probe — involving subpoenas to 23 people and raids of seven homes last fall — has triggered a high-powered protest against the Department of Justice and, in the process, could create some political discomfort for President Obama with his union supporters as he gears up for his reelection campaign.

The apparent targets are concentrated in the Midwest, including Chicagoans who crossed paths with Obama when he was a young state senator and some who have been active in labor unions that supported his political rise.

It is time to brush up on your Orwell, everybody who can still read, which is no one.

Following up:

In the Diminished Expectations Department, Obama’s Justice Department persecuting Obama-lovin’ leftists for having liberal ideals is one of those things that warrants a very reasonable response like, Eh I’m never voting again and also am going to BLOW UP AMERICA, even though such a response will also result in Obama’s Justice Department persecuting you. But our prize-winning Commenter of the Day notes that we just need to put all of this in perspective, and only then is it appropriate to weep openly and respond to all of Obama’s fund-raising spam with violent rhetoric, which will also lead to Obama’s Justice Department persecuting Obama’s supporters, again, forever.

Prommie writes in the comments to this post about the above-mentioned Nixonian horrorshow:

This is a little bit scary, yes, a tad unsettling, but then you read elsewhere in the news that the Whitehouse has also announced a major initiative to crack down hard on marijuana, the killer weed that is luring so many of our young women into white slavery and destroying the lives of so many young men, turning them into axe-wielding homicidal maniacs, then you realize, Obama has his priorities straight. Wars and conflagrations, double-dip depression, rampant financial fraud and market manipulation, unlimited political propagandizing and electioneering by the billionaire corporatocracy, voter suppression, corruption and conflict of influence even on the Supreme Court, and Obama is going after dirty hippie peaceniks, union organizers, and pot smokers. That’s our Unicorn!

And that’s the Win of the Afternoon! Enjoy Gitmo, Prommie!

Let's remember that it's a presidential tradition to go after peace activists and labor activists. Although Nixon, at least, knew how to win by telling his congressional opponents to fuck off and die.