The BBC has an article entitled The Latin American Question examining and comparing Obama’s and McCain’s positions on Latin America. As a Latin American I obviously I care about US policy towards Latin America and certainly in theory the candidate’s positions might sway my vote. I am also gay. I care about gay issues as well and they can impact my vote but neither Latin American issues or gay issues in of themselves are likely to have a determining factor in my decision on who to support, if anybody.

Still, I would say if I were to vote on one single issue, it would be energy policy and it is hard to overlook the fact Obama voted for the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy, the biggest corporate give-away in US history, and neither John McCain nor Hillary Clinton did. That vote speaks volumes. And that vote alone would prevent me from ever supporting Barack Obama, no matter how much he were to backtrack from it, which he hasn’t. There’s my lump of coal for his stocking.

In truth and unfortunately for Obama, there is nothing he can say at this point that will get me to change my mind on him. I simply think him inexperienced and therefore a risky proposition to begin with but given his rather duplicitous nature and his complete lack of conviction makes him in my mind the most dangerous American politician since Richard Nixon. Obama cannot be trusted in my view. It is not that I think him a liar but rather more a narcissist who simply wants to be loved and therefore says what he thinks his audience wants to hear. In short, Obama seems to suffer from sort of personality disorder. This opinion is not going to change and only seems to get more and more confirmed. Every nuance of Obama leads me to conclude to that he is simply dangerous and especially so given his lack of foreign policy experience.

From the BBC article:

On his three-day visit to Colombia and Mexico, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain wanted to show he cares about the issues important to Latin Americans: security, immigration, and trade. He was also aiming to display his foreign policy credentials, with his advisers taking pains to point out that his rival in November’s election, Democratic senator Barack Obama, had never been to Latin America.

“Senator Obama has never set foot in the region,” said Otto Reich, a former assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere who is now a McCain campaign adviser.

But how does Mr McCain’s approach to Latin America differ from Mr Obama’s?

The main difference is their stance on free trade agreements.

(more…)

Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sárközy de Nagy-Bocsa was born Jan. 28, 1955, in Paris, the son of a minor Hungarian aristocrat who fled Communism after World War II. His mother was a law student, herself the daughter of an immigrant, a doctor who had arrived a generation earlier from Greece. Sarkozy is about as tall as Napoleon was, and his profile is remarkably similar to that of Louis XIV. He thinks himself le roi soleil.

And it has been a year since he swept into power. And now for the next six months, France holds the rotating European Presidency so Nicolas Sarkozy is getting even more attention.

The Financial Times calls him “a one-man political oxymoron.” Here’s an excerpt:

In his first year in office, Mr Sarkozy has been a whirr of activity, cutting taxes on overtime, modifying the pension regime for millions of public sector employees, granting more autonomy to universities and stiffening France’s immigration regime.

Like all politicians, he has had to improvise, retreat and trim. Still, the Institut Thomas More, a Brussels-based think-tank that is monitoring implementation of his 490 electoral pledges, reckons Mr Sarkozy has started delivering on 60 per cent of his main promises. Only 17 per cent of his proposals have been modified or abandoned.

Yet behind this frenetic activity lurks a bigger ambition: to transform France’s value system. Mr Sarkozy’s dominant theme is that the French people must assume more responsibility themselves, take greater risks and work harder. “What is lacking in French society is the possibility to choose, the liberty to choose,” he says.

Mr Sarkozy’s mission has been to create that room for choice and reward action. There are signs that people are responding. According to the finance ministry, millions of employees have seized the chance to work more lucrative overtime – even if millions more have decided they still prefer leisure to money.

Others are not so complimentary. This week, European Union Trade Chief Peter Mandelson lashed out at Sarkozy accusing him of undermining his office.

Meanwhile, the French themselves while fascinated on one level also seem less than thrilled according this latest poll:

Confidence in President Nicolas Sarkozy to solve France’s problems has slipped by four points to 33 percent, according to a TNS-Sofres poll released on Thursday. The survey, conducted for Saturday’s edition of Le Figaro Magazine, found that five percent had complete confidence and 28 percent considerable confidence that Sarkozy can solve the problems currently facing France.

Those expressing a lack of confidence rose by four percent over the month to 65 percent, including 28 percent expressing little confidence and 37 percent no confidence in Sarkozy. The drop, after a rise the previous month, brings Sarkozy back near the lowest rating of his presidency, 32 versus 66 percent, registered in May, one year after his election.

Confidence in Prime Minister Francois Fillon slipped by two points to 42 percent, with those expressing a lack of confidence rose by three points to 54 percent, his worst score since July 2007.

Paris’s Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoe remained in the top spot among leading France politicians with a 51 percent confidence rating, a drop of two points.

TNS Sofres interviewed 1,000 people on June 25 and 26 — nearly a full week before Wednesday’s release of French-Colombian politician and FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt, whose ordeal Sarkozy had put high on his agenda.

One year past, four more to go.

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Monsieur le Téléprésident a un idée pour la télévision française. He wants to control it. How surprising. He is proposing an overhaul of French public television from making it advertising free to eliminating completely France 24 (the English language French news service) to ending independent control of French television and making it subject to government control. Not only is this a bad idea but he must have skipped his marketing classes in business school because he is labeling it a ‘cultural revolution’. Honestly, when you start borrowing from Mao, it’s pretty much a bad idea.

On a personal note, I enjoy France 24 as I enjoy Deutsche Welle and Russia Today in their English service because it allows me to view different perspectives and better absorb in English. I can understand French but not at the level I can understand English. For France to shutter France 24 would be a colossal mistake. France would be shutting down one of its windows to the world. And state control of public television is simply horrifying. It is an egregious assault upon freedom. France deserves better than this.

Via the UK Guardian:

Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to increase government control over state TV yesterday sparked an outcry from his political opponents who accused him of tightening a Berlusconi-style grip on the airwaves and dragging France back into its dark age of postwar censorship and propaganda.

The French president’s proposed “cultural revolution” for France’s five state TV channels prompted an uproar when he announced that in future, he and his cabinet would appoint the head of French state TV, instead of an independent body.

Sarkozy, known as the Téléprésident, prides himself on his numerous TV appearances, carefully studies his own ratings and has privately confided that he would have liked to have been a TV executive. So it was no surprise that he took direct control of the project to overhaul French state TV. He argued that a government appointment of the head of France Televisions was more “democratic”. This has reopened the festering row over the president’s influence over the media and closeness to his press and TV baron friends who are willing to lean on, censor or even sack journalists who displease him.

(more…)

Ouch, this is going to leave a mark. The New York Times with its July 4, 2008 editorial slams Barack Obama. Let’s hope every Democratic delegate reads it. Hell, let’s hope every American reads it.

Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush’s abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.

Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election. His team explained that, saying he had a grass-roots-based model and that while he was forgoing public money, he also was eschewing gold-plated fund-raisers. These days he’s on a high-roller hunt.

Even his own chief money collector, Penny Pritzker, suggests that the magic of $20 donations from the Web was less a matter of principle than of scheduling. “We have not been able to have much of the senator’s time during the primaries, so we have had to rely more on the Internet,” she explained as she and her team busily scheduled more than a dozen big-ticket events over the next few weeks at which the target price for quality time with the candidate is more than $30,000 per person.

The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11.

In January, when he was battling for Super Tuesday votes, Mr. Obama said that the 1978 law requiring warrants for wiretapping, and the special court it created, worked. “We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight and do not undermine the very laws and freedom that we are fighting to defend,” he declared.

Now, he supports the immunity clause as part of what he calls a compromise but actually is a classic, cynical Washington deal that erodes the power of the special court, virtually eliminates “vigorous oversight” and allows more warrantless eavesdropping than ever.

The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations — a policy that violates the separation of church and state and turns a government function into a charitable donation.

He says he would not allow those groups to discriminate in employment, as Mr. Bush did, which is nice. But the Constitution exists to protect democracy, no matter who is president and how good his intentions may be.

On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obama on two other issues: the death penalty and gun control.

Mr. Obama endorsed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups’ misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms. But it was distressing to see him declare that the court provided a guide to “reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.”

What could be more reasonable than a city restricting handguns, or requiring that firearms be stored in ways that do not present a mortal threat to children?

We were equally distressed by Mr. Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s barring the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murder.

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nominations. We don’t want any “redefining” on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in.

They forgot the part on how he lacks experience and is a disaster waiting to happen.

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FISA
GITMO
Gun rights/DC gun ban
Public Financing of Campaigns
Border Fence
Illegal Immigration
Legalization of Marihuana
Abortion
Iraq
The Mortgage Mess
Religion – (cling to guns // expand President Bush’s faith programs)
Flag Pin // Patriotism
Rev. Wright
NAFTA
Welfare Reform
Gay Marriage
The Cuba Embargo
Single-Payer Healthcare
Jerusalem
meeting with Foreign Leaders
Palestinian elections
The threat of Iran
The Patriot Act
Coal
The Surge
Offshore drilling
Wiretapping

Backtracking with Barack, my new Summer hobby. I can’t wait until we do Europe.

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I just adore it when he panders to the Christian Right. Via the Associated Press:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says “mental distress” should not qualify as a justification for late-term abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights.

In an interview this week with “Relevant,” a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.”

Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”

Not quite, what he said before:

Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he “strongly disagreed” with the ruling because it “dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women.”

The health care exception is crucial to abortion rights advocates and is considered a legal loophole by abortion opponents. By limiting the health exception to a “serious physical issue,” Obama set himself apart from other abortion rights proponents.

Backtracking with Barack, America’s new Summer hobby.

The Relevant interview in all its “glory” is below the fold. I just can’t bear to read it again. (more…)

Here is the Friday, July 4th, 2008 edition of interesting reads and events from around the world.

China-Taiwan Flights Begin
The first nonstop, cross-strait weekend flights from China landed in Taiwan on Friday morning, in the latest breakthrough in cross-strait relations that are rapidly warming under the island’s new president, Ma Ying-jeou. More from the New York Times.

Indian Airlines To Hostess: Watch Your Weight
I’ve flow Indian Airlines but once. I wasn’t impressed. If you must fly within India, use Jet Airways. Absolutely fabulous. At any rate, widespread publicity has been given to a recent judgment of the Delhi High Court grounding airline staff who do not meet weight criteria, bringing into focus a gamut of issues – fat versus fitness, discrimination against air hostesses, and mindsets trapped in notions of glamour and beauty in this service industry. It only applies to women, not men. More from the Asia Sentinel.

Is Lord Phillips Insane?
Britain’s most senior judge reopened one of the most highly charged debates in Britain last night when he said he was willing to see sharia law operate in the country, so long as it did not conflict with the laws of England and Wales, or lead to the imposition of severe physical punishments. The remarks by the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, in a speech to the London Muslim Council yesterday, had a conscious echo of the comments made by the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in February who argued that sharia law could sometimes be used in Britain. The full travesty in the UK Guardian. Is he insane?

OPEC June Production
OPEC pumped an average 32.52 million barrels a day last month, up 320,000 barrels from May, according to the survey of oil companies, producers and analysts. Production by the 12 members with quotas, all except Iraq, rose 380,000 barrels to 30.09 million barrels a day. Saudi production increased 280,000 barrels to an average 9.53 million barrels a day last month, the highest since March 2006. It was the biggest gain among OPEC members last month and represented 88 percent of the overall OPEC increase.

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Happy Fourth of July! And very special Fourth of July to Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves who celebrating this Fourth in freedom.

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