The Obama goes to Puerto Rico Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

LatinAmer President Obama has scheduled a 4-hour campaign stop in Puerto Rico tomorrow, as part of his campaign trip to Florida and North Carolina in the same day. Mickey Kaus posts,

Don’t run up the score too early, Mr. President: According to Politico, Obama’s attempt to woo Puerto Ricans with a vist to their home island “underscores the Obama campaign team’s effort to build some security into the president’s reelection bid.” Security? We’re at the “security” stage of the campaign now? I thought we were at the “desperately eking out a win somehow despite 9% unemployment” stage. …

The President is sweating it out in this recession. There are two reasons for this trip:
a. A $10,000/plate dinner at the Caribe Hilton, which aims to raise $1 million for his campaign (one local radio station said that at least $500,000 was already pledged days ago)
b. courting the 5 million Puerto Ricans like myself who live in the USA, as an attempt to counterbalance the Cuban voters in FL who traditionally vote Republican.

In other news from our Hemisphere,

ARGENTINA
Special Relationship update: Obama sides with Argentina, Hugo Chavez on Falklands

BOLIVIA
Bolivia’s illegal cars can stay
Bolivian President Evo Morales approves controversial law legalizing what critics say are stolen and smuggled foreign vehicles.

Bolivia’s stunning salt flats via Gates of Vienna

BRAZIL
Brazil’s government
Exit Palocci
The president tries to cut her losses

Battisti in Hotel with Girlfriend, 26
Cesare Battisti leaves prison with antidepressant addiction, awaiting arrival of daughters from France, via Gates of Vienna

CUBA
Spain Betrays Cuba’s Dissidents
President José Zapatero helped Castro get rid of the best leaders of the island’s nascent democracy movement.

Hugo Chavez filled with pus and purulent matter: Gets surgery in Cuba

GUATEMALA
Impunity in Guatemala
Two steps forward, one step back

HONDURAS
Honduras’s indebted economy
The cost of a coup
The country’s financial woes will last longer than its political ones

MEXICO
“Hollowed out” Mexico and hollowed-out USA

PERU
Peru’s presidential run-off
Victory for the Andean chameleon
Having reinvented himself as a moderate, Ollanta Humala has an extraordinary opportunity to marry economic growth with social progress