Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for April 2007

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The Second Annual Rally against Islamo-Fascism

Urban Infidel was there. Politically Incorrect and LGF also posted on it.

Don’t miss the Slide shows. Update, Tuesday 3 April: More pictures.

I’m sorry to say that I had to miss the rally because of being overwhelmed with seasonal allergies to the point that I couldn’t do the 2-hr trip there (and the following 2-hr return trip) if I was outdoors for any length of time. Since the rest of the family was out of town, I spent the day reading and listening to music instead.

I wish I had been able to attend the rally.

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Brazil, up and coming in today’s Blog Talk Radio

Because of the latest version of the Iranian hostage crisis, Pres. Lula’s visit to the USA went mostly ignored. However, this was a very significant event.

I have stated several times on this blog that am certain that, once Brazil gets its economic act together, it will bring about a new era of prosperity to Latin America. Brazil is a leader in Latin America: when Brazil did away with its military dictatorship, the countries in Latin America followed.

Brazil has every potential to become an economic superstar: The country has the land mass and the population, it participates in the international banking system, it has manufacturing, natural resources, and entrepeneurship. And it’s making the right kind of economic reforms.

Look at this:

The good news on the Brazilian economy have gone mostly ignored, but they are very important: Brazil’s economy: Bigger than thought
An underestimated pay-off from economic reform

There are other reasons to think that Brazil is better off than generally realised. In a recent paper*, two IMF economists argue that official data “grossly underestimate” the growth of household income. Brazil’s economic opening in the early 1990s lowered prices and improved the quality and availability of goods, changes that were largely missed by the consumer-price index. Using data about what people actually consumed, the economists estimate that income per head grew 4 1/2%a year between 1987 and 2002 compared with the official figure of 1 1/2%, with the poor benefiting most. That makes Brazil look better; it makes economic reform look better, too.

As I mentioned in my conversation with The Gathering Storm that it is strategically important to have democratic, prosperous countries sorrounding declining countries like Venezuela.

Brazil and the USA share much in common, as this post in Publius Pundit explains,

The implications of this will be amazing. Huge Brazil and huge America are united in a common purpose to halt the rising and arrogant power of Hugo Chavez, whose oil fueled earnings are being used to intimidate other nations. Now Hugo is encircled by two big clouds, Brazil to his south and the U.S. to his north, both of whom are determined to develop their ethanol industries to reduce Chavez’s monopoly on energy. Ethanol is not a cure-all and won’t replace oil as an energy source, but it will widen the pool of available energies, and that’s important because right now, China’s and India’s rises have narrowed the margin of excess, making every drop that Chavez produces a critical one because there isn’t any extra. Hence. Chavez’s monopoly and power.

We have a threshold of opportunity to create free markets, and create wealth, by abolishing all farm subsidies and trade barriers with Latin American countries that are willing to provide property rights, democracy and the rule of law for their citizens.

The current trend in Washington is likely to approve serious barriers to expanding trade. This is a grievous mistake that will resonate not only in trade, but in national security, terrorism, immigration policy, and corruption in the USA.

Today at noon my Blog Talk Radio guest is Monica Showalter of Investor’s Business Daily. We’ll be talking about the UK and the Falklands, Brazil, Venezuela and Latin America.
blog radio
Don’t miss it!
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Other blogs posting on it
Silvio Canto

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Psychology Today, the AIPAC prosecution, and other items

Remember the Psychology Today article on the Ideological Animal? Well, Cinnamon Stillwell tells us that Psy Today published my friend Asher Abrams‘s open letter (emphasis added)

I’m curious, though, to know what it is exactly that your article is trying to establish. Because it looks as if you’re trying very hard to find psychological, i.e. non-rational, explanations for cases where people adopt “conservative” political beliefs. There’s no acknowledgment that such a political shift could come about as the result of a rational assessment of the relevant facts and arguments; nor, conversely, is there any discussion of fear-related psychology on the political left (dire warnings about global warming and the ever-impending American police state spring to mind). And instead of encouraging people to inform themselves on political issues while listening with an open mind to different points of view, your article prescribes the simple expedient of “reminding ourselves to think rationally”, as if the fear itself, rather than its objective cause, were the real problem.

In fact, in an entire article devoted to what you call the “9/11 effect”, there is not a single direct reference to the terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans.

In this light, it’s difficult for me to escape the conclusion that your article is ideologically driven. The agenda seems to be to encourage readers to dismiss precisely those fears which, in your analysis, lead to conservative politics. In short, you want to “cure” people of being conservative.

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While Sandy Berger walks free, two two former AIPAC officials are prosecuted for receiving classified information under the Espionage Act: First They Came for the Jews
A prosecution under the Espionage Act threatens the First Amendment.

What chance the defendants–who asked no one for classified information–have of acquittal and the avoidance of prison remains to be seen. Though Judge T. S. Ellis rejected defense motions to dismiss the charges on constitutional grounds, his early rulings have so far shown a keen appreciation of the meaning this case. In this he stands in sharp contrast to the nation’s leading civil rights guardians, these days busy filing lawsuits against the government and fulminating on behalf of the rights of captured terrorists in Guantanamo and elsewhere, while accusing the U.S. of failing to provide open trials and assurances that the accused have the right to view the evidence against them. As of this day neither the ACLU nor the Center for Constitutional Rights has shown the smallest interest in this prosecution so bound up with First Amendment implications. Nor has most of the media, whose daily work includes receiving “leaks” from government officials far more damaging to national security than anything alleged in this case. In this as in the Scooter Libby matter, the desire to see Bush Administration officials nailed apparently counts for more than First Amendment principle.

Powerline has more.

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Little Miss Attila posts on Fred Thompson – Robert Novak has more.
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When the money runs out. Not that the Dems give a damn. (h/t Larwyn)
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Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs

Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans’ fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it’s high time for a new bout of re-education.

(h/t Irwin)

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In praise of William Powell


William Powell was not the best-looking guy in the Hollywood stable of stars. His nose was too big, his hairline receeding, his chin was weak and he didn’t look good in a swimsuit.

But he certainly was one of the most appealing.

For starters he had a wonderful voice. He got his big break in pictures in 1929, when the studios were looking for good actors that sounded good, as the talkies were the latest sensation but the technology of the times made eveyone sound 1/2 octave higher than their real-life pitch.

Powell was an actor of great presence, not because he was tall (6′), but because he projected integrity. As his IMDB biography said,

Powell could play any role with authority, whether in a comedy, thriller or drama.

On the surface, William Powell was a man of contradictions: He was funny but never was a fool. He was born in the 19th century, but embodied the sleek modernism of the 20th century Art Deco era in the Thin Man movies (of which the first one was the only one slightly based on the Dashiell Hammet novel). He was a character actor who was a leading man.

He seduced you with your eyes wide open.

In our days when men are protrayed in film, TV, and media as bumbling fools, Powell would have been entirely dismissed because he always was the grown-up. He was the father figure who actually played the title role in Life With Father.

I was thinking about William Powell because this morning AMC was playing How To Marry A Millionaire. The movie’s a showcase for its female stars but Powell stole it from them. He plays a rich old guy who brings Lauren Bacall to the altar (at the time, the real-life Powell was 62 years old, and she was 29), fully aware that she was marrying him for his money. Yet at the very last moment, because he loved her, he set her free to marry the man she loved. And you knew she was a fool for not loving him.

William Powell: A manly man, for our times.

Here are Mr. and the by-then-ex-Mrs. Powell in a great scene in My Man Godfrey: “… and I’m grateful to you because you helped me to beat life”

The IMDB has a slide show.
Related post here.
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Palm Sunday on April’s Fool’s Day

Well, it looks like that NY gallery cancels naked chocolate Jesus, but today, Palm Sunday, the artist says that offers to buy or exhibit a nude chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ have poured in.

Catholics around the world are rioting and asking for the artist’s head on a stake over this scuplture, which was scheduled to be shown on Holy Week, during the high holiday season. Oh, wait – it’s April 1st!

Update, Monday 2 April: Leave it to Lileks to find the postcard.

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Via Pajamas Media, Ten of the best April Fool’s Day hoaxes
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Speaking of April’s fools, the people looking for “Bear Grylls naked” keep coming back to my blog. Imagine their disappointment! (Try YouTube, folks)
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Dr Sanity has a special April Fool’s edition of the Carnival:

And the Sanity Squad’s podcast really did make it!

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