i say get over it. there was nothing wrong with pointing out that dick cheney was messing about toward a fascist dictatorship. i'd be happy to appear in public with an obama hammer-and-sickle t-shirt, not because i equate bo with stalin, but because i want to help short-circuit the soviet tendency. in a few months he massively increased federal spending and started nationalizing banks and manufacturing and always has a tendency toward redistribution by punitive taxation: marx's recommendations in a nutshell. our education, healthcare, and a variety of other sectors come more and more to be dominated by the state. bo is relatively mellow and democratic, but all these mechanisms he's constructing are liable to abuse by his associates and successors. it is pretty amazing (well, no; it's predictable) how unenthusiastic the left actually is for free speech once they've got the power. insulting obama is not yet a crime, but people act as though it were, and no doubt the hammer-and-sickle motif is...racist, the work of the ignorant and the insane, etc. one starts to characterize dissent - especially as focused on the charismatic chairman - as "dangerous" (earl ofari hutchinson on obama-as-heath). i want to multiply the images, just so that when folks like that start thinking about how this can be repressed, they'll be overwhelmed by the task, just to keep alive an american dissenting tradition. that people reject and protest against and confront their legislators about the healthcare proposals is greeted with hysterical condemnation: "violent mobs," "fascists," "racists," etc. who doesn't want to repress violent racist fascist mobs? never mind that the evidence that these people are violent racist fascist mobs is that they are asking questions in town halls. the response is a premonition of left totalitarianism.