Obama stands on fairness principle over income taxes with one exemption, his.

Workaround for Blogger Screwup?

Deuce,

Somehow the posting function on the latest thread is all messed up.

Here's my comment, maybe you can put it where it belongs and delete this post...

Thanks,

Doug

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"The US would have been much better off had industry been shifted to the Americas than China. We have the absurd situation of US capital having helped build China and the Chinese have leveraged that to purchase materials in the Americas, increasing US material costs and establishing a social foothold in areas that we ignore."

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That's one that never made sense to me since day one.

Nixon was obsessed w/Russia as we were in Wilson's War in Afghanistan.
Kissinger was, and is in love with the intricacies of the Chinese Mind.

Both efforts creating a much more challenging World in terms of the interests of the United States of America.

Washington’s neglected southern neighbors

LATIN AMERICA

Washington's neglected southern neighbors

It seems to be US President Obama's 'Latin America Month:' He hosted the presidents of Mexico and Brazil and attends a regional summit in Colombia this weekend. But Latin America is still far from a priority for the US.

If you're browsing US papers for articles on Latin America, you'll have to look very closely. On the day after the North America summit at the White House, President Obama met with his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper - but the New York Times only printed a picture of the three of them on page 17.

The headline was "President confident health law will stand." As usual, the US journalists' main interest was Obama's domestic policy: his health-care reform is currently in limbo, pending a decision by the US Supreme Court. Only towards the end of the three leaders' press conference, did questions focus on US relations with Mexico and Canada.

In fact, there are plenty of issues to discuss - the stream of illegal immigrants and the drug and weapons trafficking from south to north being the most pressing. At least those topics do regularly make it into US papers.

Undemocratic tendencies?

Raul Castro's Cuba is a member of OAS yet barred from attending its summits

But other Latin American countries don't ever make it to center stage because they have nothing to do with issues like the Middle East and Afghanistan, Ted Piccone, Latin America expert with the Brookings Institute told DW. Even so, the Obama administration has worked with those countries, added Piccone, who has worked at the US National Security Council as well as the State Department and the Pentagon, saying there was cooperation on issues like security, fighting drugs, renewable energy and improving economic ties.

Last autumn, the US and Colombia signed a free-trade agreement, but only years after it had been put to Congress. There are a number of countries, however - among them Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia - where the US no longer has ambassadors. Here too, Congress is blocking any progress, in part because of concerns over undemocratic developments in those countries.

Piccone cites several examples for those concerns: restrictions of freedom of speech in Ecuador and Venezuela, election irregularities in Nicaragua, massive violence in Mexico. Yet Washington is well aware that the US is neither able nor inclined to play the role of policeman in Latin America.

Competition from China

Relations between the US and Latin America are, therefore, first and foremost focused on trade. The 1994 plan to create a free-trade association that would encompass all the Americas was abandoned long ago. Aside from the multilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the US has also entered into bilateral trade agreements, most recently with Colombia and Panama.

But the US has a new competitor: China. Wealthy and with a great need for raw materials, China trades with Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil and Chile. The US still has a cutting edge over China, simply because of its proximity to Latin America, says Ray Walser of the conservative Heritage Foundation. Ted Piccone also points out that the US is closer and already has a long history of trade with its southern neighbors.

But it's not only China that's emerging as a competitor to the US - Latin American countries themselves are also gaining more influence on the international stage. Brazil, for instance, is looking to establish itself as a leader of South American nations and is demanding a permanent seat on the UN Security Council to weigh in on the international dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff wants to establish a leading role for her country

There will, therefore, be much to discuss when Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff meets with Obama on Monday. The two will not only prepare for the summit of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Colombia later this month but also discuss the upcoming G20 summit in Mexico in June. Ray Walser describes Brazil as a "friendly rival" of the US. The relation between the two countries' leaders is said to be good. Obama met Rousseff shortly after she became president in 2011 already. Back then, their talks focused on energy, the economy, finance and global partnership.

This time, the talks will also include meetings with business leaders. The fact that Brazil's ties with Iran have significantly cooled might help. Rouseff recently refused to host Iranian President Ahmadinejad during his Latin America trip.

Democratic standards

Ties with communist Cuba remain difficult. When Obama attends the summit of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Colombia, Cuba won't be there. But Piccone warns that it might be different come the next summit. He is worried that a return of Cuba to the OAS would undermine the democratic principles of the group. It would be a hefty blow to the ambitions and achievements of the past years, when democracy became of focus of the region.

But for now, preparations are underway for the Colombia summit. Walser says the meetings with the Mexican president and Canadian prime minister are part of a diplomatic offensive aimed at showing that the US does have its southern neighbors on the radar. But he warns that, among other things, the financial crisis is making it difficult for Washington to invest in gaining more influence in Latin America. Obama will have to appeal to common interests.

Walser says the president will have to find frank words to explain, for instance, that Latin American too would be affected, should the tensions with Iran escalate. So at least during the OAS summit, Walser thinks, Latin America should be at the top of Obama's foreign policy agenda.

Author: Christina Bergmann, Washington DC / ai
Editor: Andrea Rönsberg DW

Different shades of red blood.

RE Urban thuggery

Watch "Rise of the Foot Soldier" based on true story for some insight into Britain's problem circa 1975 through 1995.

There's a consistency about "thuggery" that transcends the contextual. A fancy way of saying they're pretty much all the same. Regardless of ethnicity or race. Some are meaner than others but past a certain point, it's just different shades of blood red.


Max (shorT for Maxine)

Zimmerman charged with 2nd degree murder

What affect will this have on the election?

• What happens if Zimmerman is exonerated? 
• Will the rioting begin? 
• Has anyone heard a word about the white student murdered by three blacks in Mississippi?
• Why is AJ Eric Holder meeting and praising Al Towanna Sharpton?

TSA Laptop Dances

Grad Student Challenges Border Laptop Searches

J.D. Tuccille | April 10, 2012 REASON

One of the great thrills of international travel is that frisson of Cold War nostalgia we feel upon return, as we line up for readmittance to our own country, just feet from the welcoming embrace of Bill of Rights protections that end, by mandate of a clause located somewhere in the Constitution, at a fifteen-foot distance from anybody wearing a Customs and Border Protection Uniform. But as Checkpoint-Charlie thrilling as even routine border crossings are, they can get a bit tired and, even, over-the-top. It was one such excessively enthusiastic search that led McGill University graduate student Pascal Abidor to challenge the U.S. government's policy of poking through electronic devices at will after he was detained while agents pawed through his laptop.

Abidor was travelling on an Amtrak train from Montreal to New York on May 1, 2010, to visit his parents after the end of the winter semester at McGill. A customs official asked him if he had travelled anywhere in the past year, he said. He told the agent he had been to Lebanon and Jordan.

"As soon as I had told them I had been to the Middle East, that's when they continued the inspection," he told QMI Agency in an interview Monday.

He said he was brought to another section of the train and told to enter the password to his computer.

"They went straight to my pictures," he said.

Customs agents found pictures of rallies of Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups that the U.S. Department of State lists as "foreign terrorist organizations."

Abidor said he told the agent that the pictures were for his thesis in Islamic studies.

He said the agent didn't believe him.

Abidor said he was then handcuffed, frisked "violently" and driven to the border station where he was held for three hours.

To be honest, I've never really understood the terrorist-detection rationale for searches of laptops and the like. Taken on its face, the tactic seems to be aimed at a sweet spot of terrorists too proudly sophisticated to be willing to keep their sinister plans written on a few pieces of paper folded unobtrusively into a jacket pocket, but not sophisticated enough to use software like TrueCrypt to keep their schematics and damning emails hidden and encrypted. True, that sub-population probably does exist in this big world of ours, but it would seem a small nail to hit with a big and really, really annoying hammer.

More likely, I think, border agents are just too lazy to surf the Net for their own porn.

Abidor, a citizen of both the U.S. and France, is represented in his lawsuit against the U.S. government by the ACLU. According to the civil liberties organization, "Between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, over 6,500 people—nearly 3,000 of them U.S. citizens—were subjected to a search of their electronic devices as they crossed U.S. borders. DHS claims it has the right to conduct these invasive searches whenever it likes, to whomever it likes, and without having any individualized suspicion."

The ACLU, of course begs to differ. It represents not just Abidor, but also the National Press Photographers Association, a group prone to transporting electronic devices hither and yon, and loathe to see them swiped and held by federal officials for ten days, as in the McGill student's case. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is also party to the suit, concerned as its members are, with keeping data on clients that might be stored on laptops out of prying government hands.

Abidor and company's lawsuit against the federal search-and-seizure policy got a boost on March 29, when U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper refused to dismiss a similar suit by David House. House is an outspoken supporter of whistleblower Bradley Manning whose laptop was nabbed by federal officials at O'Hare International Airport and held for seven weeks.

Seven weeks? Even CBP should know that there comes a point when it's obvious that you're not searching anything; you're just screwing with people.

Pity one of the victims of Hillary Clinton's new found allies in Syria.

Bashar al-Assad has been warned to implement a UN-backed peace plan to end more than a year of violence in Syria, amid growing scepticism at the lack of international resolve to tackle the bloodiest crisis of the Arab spring.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, issued the threat at a conference of the Friends of the Syrian people in Istanbul on Sunday, but there was little evidence of coherent international action if he does not comply. In any case, Clinton has no clue about what is going on in Syria and what will happen if we get involved.

WARNING: This video is not pretty. It is a pro-Assad civilian being executed by what would be one of our new found allies.

NOW LISTEN TO CLUELESS CLINTON:

Are you sure I don’t need an ID?

From John Fund National Review

Attorney General Eric Holder is a staunch opponent of laws requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls to improve ballot security. He calls them “unnecessary” and has blocked their implementation in Texas and South Carolina, citing the fear they would discriminate against minorities.


I wonder what Holder will think when he learns just how easy it was for someone to be offered his ballot just by mentioning his name in a Washington, D.C., polling place in Tuesday’s primaries.

Holder’s opposition to ID laws comes in spite of the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in 2008, authored by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, that upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s tough ID requirement. When groups sue to block photo-ID laws in court, they can’t seem to produce real-world examples of people who have actually been denied the right to vote. According to opinion polls, over 75 percent of Americans — including majorities of Hispanics and African-Americans — routinely support such laws.
One reason is that people know you can’t function in the modern world without showing ID — you can’t cash a check, travel by plane or even train, or rent a video without being asked for one. In fact, PJ Media recently proved that you can’t even enter the Justice Department in Washington without showing a photo ID. Average voters understand that it’s only common sense to require ID because of how easy it is for people to pretend they are someone else

Filmmaker James O’Keefe demonstrated just how easy it is on Tuesday when he dispatched an assistant to the Nebraska Avenue polling place in Washington where Attorney General Holder has been registered for the last 29 years. O’Keefe specializes in the same use of hidden cameras that was pioneered by the recently deceased Mike Wallace, who used the technique to devastating effect in exposing fraud in Medicare claims and consumer products on 60 Minutes. O’Keefe’s efforts helped expose the fraud-prone voter-registration group ACORN with his video stings, and has had great success demonstrating this year in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Minnesota just how easy it is to obtain a ballot by giving the name of a dead person who is still on the rolls. Indeed, a new study by the Pew Research Center found at least 1.8 million dead people are still registered to vote. They aren’t likely to complain if someone votes in their place.

In Washington, it was child’s play for O’Keefe to beat the system. O’Keefe’s assistant used a hidden camera to document his encounter with the election worker at Holder’s polling place:

Man: “Do you have an Eric Holder, 50th Street?

Poll worker: “Let me see here.”

Man: Xxxx 50th Street.

Poll Worker: Let’s see, Holder, Hol-t-e-r, or Hold-d-e-r?

Man: H-o-l-d-e-r.

Poll Worker: D-e-r. Okay.

Man: That’s the name.

Poll Worker: I do. Xxxx 50th Street NW. Okay. [Puts check next to name, indicating someone has shown up to vote.] Will you sign there . . .

Man: I actually forgot my ID.

Poll Worker: You don’t need it; it’s all right.

Man: I left it in the car.

Poll Worker: As long as you’re in here, and you’re on our list and that’s who you say you are, we’re okay.

Man: I would feel more comfortable if I go get my ID, is it all right if I go get it?

Poll Worker: Sure, go ahead.

Man: I’ll be back faster than you can say furious!

Poll Worker: We’re not going anywhere.

Note that O’Keefe’s assistant never identified himself as Eric Holder, so he was not illegally impersonating him.

Nor did he attempt to vote using the ballot that was offered him, or even to accept it. O’Keefe has been accused by liberals of committing voter fraud in his effort to expose just how slipshod the election systems of various no-ID-required states are, but lawyers say his methods avoid that issue. Moreover, he has only taped his encounters with election officials in jurisdictions that allow videotaping someone in public with only one party’s knowledge.