Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

May 16, 2011 By Fausta

The Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

LatinAmerLATIN AMERICA
The Chinese Dragon Sweeps Through Latin America
Time to stand up and take notice — English and Spanish speakers alike

ARGENTINA
Jorge Macchi
South American magic on show in the north

BRAZIL
Bossa nova and Elenco Records
A moody soundtrack for Brazil

No Samba for Chavez this time around

COLOMBIA
After 11 Months Colombia Asks, Who’ll Stop the Rain?

Take a seat

COSTA RICA
Organized Crime in Costa Rica and the Other Balloon Effect

ECUADOR
Ecuador: Uncertainty and Division

Report Links Ecuador’s President With Colombian Guerrillas

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa may have received as much as $400,000 from Colombian guerrillas and their drug trafficking allies for his 2006 presidential campaign, a U.K. think tank concluded in a report released Tuesday.

Ecuador emerging as new cocaine centre

Ecuador’s constitutional referendum
A close count
The balance of powers hangs in the balance

Oppenheimer Report; Ecuadorian media censorship

EL SALVADOR
El Salvador Quits the Market Model
The country’s debt has been repeatedly downgraded as President Mauricio Funes has increased government spending.

The problem is not only reckless spending but also hostility toward business. The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, which once ranked El Salvador as the ninth freest economy in the world (2000), now places it at 39.

MEXICO
Battle With Mexican Gang at Texas-Border Lake Kills 13

HAITI
Martelly inaugurated as Haitian president

NICARAGUA
Qaddafi’s Man in Managua
Sandinista boss Daniel Ortega is an old friend of the Libyan tyrant.

PANAMA
Fears grow that US unready for larger Panama canal, via The Latin Americanist.

PERU
Giuliani accompanies Keiko Fujimori on campaign

PUERTO RICO
American Airlines Backs Puerto Rico Airport Plan

VENEZUELA
Hugo Chavez: FARC’s unreliable partner
Close logistical support is suggested in new report between Venezuelan officials and wanted murderers – so what do we do about it?

Hugo Chavez’ main link to the FARC, trusted adviser (and twice Interior Minister) Ramon Rodriguez Chacin

Committee to Free Venezuela Foundation’s Anonymous Effort

The week’s posts,
Chavez, nursing knee injury, tweets
Zelaya returning to Honduras
Raiding private pensions: it’s not just for Argentina anymore
Ecuador’s Correa and the FARC
A guitar grows in Argentina
Bin Laden’s cousin arrested in Ecuador for human trafficking
Makled now in Venezuela

At Real Clear World
Venezuela Wanted FARC to Act as Hit Men
Iranian Training Camps in Latin America

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Filed Under: Argentina, Brazil, Carnival of Latin America, Colombia, Costa Rica, crime, Daniel Ortega, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Latin America, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Rafael Correa, Rudolph Giuliani, Venezuela Tagged With: American Airlines, Fausta's blog, Keiko Fujimori, Muammar Qaddafi, Zetas

April 7, 2010 By Fausta

Rudi vs Arianna smackdown VIDEO

Stacy has the video,

NewsBusters has the transcript,

RUDY GIULIANI: Arianna, I’m also, I’m also responsible largely for the turnaround of New York City. I took over, I took over a city that had 2,000 murders a year, I left a city with four or 500 hundred murders a year. I took over a city with 1.1 million people on welfare, I left a city with 500,000 people on welfare. I took over a city with a $2.3 million deficit, I left a city with a $3 million surplus. I hired a lot of good people to do that…It’s just a cheap shot.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: That’s a cheap shot!…I want to stop. I want to stop right now. I want to talk also about Bernie Kerik for a second. I know no one else will agree with me. This is just me talking and nobody else. Bernie Kerik did a hell of a job also keeping New York City safe. Two, it’s an unpopular thing to say, Bernie Kerik made mistakes, a lot of people make mistakes. I was glad Bernie Kerik was standing behind Rudy Giuliani September 11. And the bottom line is Arianna, if Rudy Giuliani did not run for President of the United States, Bernie Kerik would be walking the streets today, because the second Rudy Giuliani started running for President of the United States, the long knifes came out and they started searching everybody’s record and they found somebody who had made some bad mistakes. […]

MORT ZUCKERMAN: If there is one thing that the mayor deserves a lot of credit for is that he turned around the living conditions of New York by really reinforcing law and order, and particularly backing the police, and doing what he, a fundamental transformation of life in this city.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: That’s not either, or. You are not judging the mayor’s entire history. We’re talking about something very important, something very specific. And we’re talking also about this knee-jerk attempt to criticize the administration on everything, especially the position of the president on terrorism from a man who said you don’t know if waterboarding is torture. I don’t know if you still hold that position.

GIULIANI: Well, first of all, we have a perfect right to talk all about that, but you’re comment about Bernie Kerik was totally irrelevant to it and just a cheap shot. […]

SCARBOROUGH: Can I ask also how we got from Marco Rubio to waterboarding, Arianna? That is a wild (?), you have taken this conversation and hijacked it.
…
HUFFINGTON: It’s all about what the mayor stands for. What the man stands for means that we can look at who he supports from that perspective. This is a man…

SCARBOROUGH: Do you want to take waterboarding as the issue you embrace, because I know a guy sitting in the United States Senate now that said it polled pretty damn well in Massachusetts.

HUFFINGTON: What does this have to do with anything?

SCARBOROUGH: It has everything to do with everything. You’re saying that his position on waterboarding disqualifies him to endorse a guy in Florida, and I’m telling you if waterboarding is popular in Massachusetts, it’s probably pretty popular in my home state of Florida.

HUFFINGTON: So what? So it doesn’t disqualify him from supporting anybody he wants. It means that I don’t have to take his support particularly seriously. That’s all I’m saying.

SCARBOROUGH: I don’t think he gives a damn whether you support his candidate or not because you’re not going to support him anyway, right?

HUFFINGTON: I’m not saying whether I’m going to support his candidate. I’m saying we’re having a conversation about whether who he supports makes a difference.

SCARBOROUGH: It does in Florida.

HUFFINGTON: I mean, this is a man who also spent $50 million in the presidential race and got one delegate.

SCARBOROUGH: Hold on a second. Arianna, I’ve got to say this. Just stop. If we’re going to do this, Arianna, I, understand, we’re going to talk about your race in California.

HUFFINGTON: I never, I mean, my…

SCARBOROUGH: You ran for governor of California, and it was a complete flop. I still want to hear your ideas, and I don’t always go back to your failures here or your failures there. But for some reason, you’re doing it with Giuliani. And I, by the way, I would be defending somebody on the Left if someone on the Right was doing the same thing to them.

GIULIANI: The reality is you criticized the Tea Party movement and the right-wingers for getting terribly personal and terribly irrelevant and racist, and you’re the worst offender. I mean, I come on here just to talk about Marco Rubio, you’re attacking me on Bernie Kerik, you’re attacking me on how I ran my presidential race. I imagine you’re going to attack me on what I did in the Little League when I was a child. I mean, this is an over the top, emotional reaction as opposed to an intellectual discussion of whether Rubio or Crist would be the better senator.

That’s what we have Arianna for, isn’t it?

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Filed Under: politics, Republicans, Rudolph Giuliani Tagged With: Arianna Huffington, Fausta's blog, Marco Rubio, Rudy Giuliani

December 5, 2009 By Fausta

Rudi does Rio

Giuliani To Provide Security Consulting For Rio Olympics

Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s consulting firm is being hired by the city of Rio de Janeiro to help make the city safe for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Giuliani visited a slum in Rio on Friday and praised the city’s efforts to bring order to violence-plagued areas filled with drug traffickers.

He says Rio can be a safe city before the Games begin.

The governor of Rio says the firm is being contracted to give security advice. Details of the deal were not disclosed.

Take it away, Peter!

Same song, with Hugh Jackman as Peter Allen,

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Filed Under: Brazil, Olympics, Rudolph Giuliani Tagged With: 2016 Olympics, Fausta's blog, Rio, Rio de Janeiro

September 20, 2009 By Fausta

Paterson to Obama: Pffffttttt!!!!

Earlier today, Obama administration asks Gov. Paterson not to seek reelection in 2010.

Well, it didn’t take long for Paterson to give Obama the raspberry:
Paterson Says He Will Run, Rejecting Call From Obama

Gov. David A. Paterson defiantly vowed to run for election next year despite the White House‘s urging that he withdraw from the New York governor’s race.
…
“I have said time and time again that I am running for governor next year,” he said at the 40th annual African-American Day Parade.

Mr. Paterson would not characterize what he was told by the White House, saying that he would not “discuss confidential conversations.”

“I’m not talking about any specific conversations,” he said. “As I said, I am running for office.”

President Obama had sent a request to Mr. Paterson that he withdraw from the New York governor’s race, fearing that Mr. Paterson cannot recover from his dismal political standing, according to two senior administration officials and a New York Democratic operative with direct knowledge of the situation.

The decision to ask Mr. Paterson to step aside was proposed by political advisers to Mr. Obama, but approved by the president himself, one of the administration officials said.

As you may recall, Paterson was not elected; instead, he became governor following Eliot Spitzer’s resignation over a sex scandal involving prostituties.

Why did Obama ask?

The general election is more than a year away, but Mr. Obama and his political team are moving now in part because of signals from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, that he may run for governor, according to Democrats who have spoken with White House officials. Many Democratic leaders believe that Mr. Giuliani’s presence at the top of the Republican ticket could spark enthusiasm among his party’s voters, who might otherwise have little desire to go to the polls.

Should a President be involved in state politics to this extent? James Joyner says,

A sitting president has long been considered the nominal “head” of his party. Obama seems to be taking that to its logical conclusion. There’s not really any reason he shouldn’t use his influence behind the scenes in this manner, although it’s yet another step down the rather depressing road of presidents thinking they actually “run the country” rather than just heading up one of three branches of the central government in a federal system.

What do you think?

And, would Giuliani present a formidable challenge to a Democrat?

UPDATE
It’s happened in Minnesota

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Democrats, New York, NY, politics, Rudolph Giuliani Tagged With: David Paterson, Fausta's blog

January 11, 2008 By Fausta

"You’re likable enough, Hillary."

Dr Krauthammer is Bringing Obama Back to Earth

It’s not just that NBC admitted that “it’s hard to stay objective covering this guy.” Or that Newsweek had a cover article so adoring that one wonders what is left for coverage of the Second Coming. Or that Obama’s media acolytes wax poetic that his soaring rhetoric and personal biography will abolish the ideological divide of the 1960s — as if the division between left and right, between free markets and the welfare state, between unilateralism and internationalism, between social libertarianism and moral traditionalism are residues of Sergeant Pepper and the March on Washington. The baby boomers in their endless solipsism now think they invented left and right — the post-Enlightenment contest of ideologies that dates back to the seating arrangements of the Estates-General in 1789.

The freest of all passes to Obama is the general neglect of the obvious central contradiction of his candidacy — the bipartisan uniter who would bring us together by transcending ideology is at every turn on every policy an unwavering, down-the-line, unreconstructed, uninteresting, liberal Democrat.

He doesn’t even offer a modest deviation from orthodoxy. When the Gang of 14, seven Republican and seven Democratic senators, agreed to restore order and a modicum of bipartisanship to the judicial selection process, Obama refused to join lest he anger the liberal base.

Special interests? Obama is a champion of the Davis-Bacon Act, an egregious gift to Big Labor that makes every federal public-works project more costly. He not only vows to defend it, but proposes extending it to artificially raise wages for any guest worker program.

On Iraq, of course he denigrates the surge. That’s required of Democratic candidates. But he further claims that the Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda and joined us — get this — because of the Democratic victory in the 2006 midterm elections.

Obama has yet to have it pointed out to him by a mainstream interviewer that the Anbar Salvation Council was founded by Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha two months earlier. Obama has yet to be asked why any Sunni would choose to join up with the American invaders at precisely the time when Democrats would have them leaving — and be left like the pro-American Vietnamese or the pro-French Algerians to be hunted and killed when their patrons were gone. That’s suicide.

Even if you believe that a Clinton restoration would be a disaster, you should still be grateful for New Hampshire. National swoons, like national hysterias, obliterate thought. The New Hampshire surprise has at least temporarily broken the spell. Maybe now someone will lift the curtain and subject our newest man from hope to the scrutiny that every candidate deserves.

Years ago Hillary said, “You don’t have to fall in love, you just have to fall in line.” Unfortunately for her the media’s fallen in love… with Obama.

——————————————————-

Last night I liveblogged with the Heading Right gang, and we thought that either Fred won, or that it was a McCain/Fred tie.

Here’s Fred mopping the floor with Huck:

Today JASmius of Hard Starboard posted A Mute Commentary pointing to Giuliani,

Nice to see that Fred did well. One could make the case that Fred has topped every debate he’s been in. Regrettably, debates do not win elections, and they’re not getting FDT out of single digits. How much less so this cycle, when substance looks more and more like it’s being abandoned in favor of emotion and symbolism (Huckles, Obama, and Hillary’s crocodile tears) and sheer mass amnesia (McCain).

I’m a little surprised that Romney is melting under the pressure. But he should be scared, his modest, early delegate lead not withstanding. There’s no way he’s going to “second place” himself to the nomination, no matter how wishfully the Romneylans think. His entire strategy was predicated on winning Iowa and New Hampshire. Now he has to win Michigan, or it’ll be perceived as strike three for his campaign. And the latest polling composite there has McCain pulling slightly ahead.

I agree with Patrick Basham (or, since I posted the idea before he did, it may be more accruate to say that he agrees with me) that the ultimate beneficiary of Huck’s and McCain’s double-team on Romney will be Giuliani, who is poised to swoop in, take Florida and clean up on February 5th. Not only is he better equipped organizationally, financially, and notoriatily to wage a national campaign than “Sailor” or the Rev’rund, but after the “near-death experience” through which conservatives are currently suffering at the spectre of the two least trustworthy, left-most Republicans in the field winning the first two “bellweather” nominating contests, even Rudy’s social liberalism will gain a whole new palatability if he can enable the GOP to avert both the complete evisceration of the Reagan coalition and total disaster in November. Giuliani-Thompson, anyone?

Yeah, I’m the guy who spent the past year saying that “America’s Mayor” was unnominatable. But I could never have imagined that the twenty-first century Elmer Gantry and Darth Queeg would emerge as frontrunners, either. We do live in “interesting” times. And that isn’t a good thing.

What is interesting in both articles is that the top spots are in contention. A year ago things were looking like the annointed would take it all.

Now, who knows.

Betsy also notices that “Republicans must be in the position of not only considering which candidate they like the most, but also vote defensively for the one best able to win the general election.”

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Filed Under: Barak Obama, Democrats, Fred Thompson, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, politics, Republicans, Rudolph Giuliani

November 9, 2007 By Fausta

Hillary, the media and today’s roster

Betsy’s asking, Has the victim card been played out?
It’ll never be played out. There’s too much riding on the victimology industry.

It takes a village to tip a single mom

—————————————————————

Jihad on panties
—————————————————————

Siggy writes about Media Dances And Other Forms Of Distraction and this week’s Useful Media Idiot of the Week
—————————————————————

Bernard Kerik has been indicted. I agree with Macsmind that “But this is good news in a way for Guilliani the story will be three days old by Monday.”

Jammie Wearing Fool has the whole roster of Hillary cronies.

Green Mountain Politics has a good Giuliani impersonation.

—————————————————————

Via Larwyn, Roy Spencer on Global Warming
—————————————————————

As N.Y. Economy Sours, Aliens Plan To Leave for Home, or at least for Newark.
—————————————————————

The Van Gogh didn’t sell
—————————————————————

Via Sex and the South,
cash advance

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Filed Under: art, Hillary Clinton, illegal immigration, media, Rudolph Giuliani

October 22, 2007 By Fausta

Last night’s debate, and Fred en espanol

For the first time, the candidates actually got to debate each others’ points. The WaPo says, Attacks Sharpen Among Party’s Principal Rivals. Fred Thompson’s running as a conservative, and he’s not keeping quiet about it:

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney were quickly put on the defensive, fending off criticism leveled by former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.), who questioned their conservative credentials.

While the debate played on TV I was keeping an eye on Carlos Curbelo’s liveblogging in Spanish at the Fred Thompson site.

As I mentioned last night, I was skeptical over the bilingual experiment. The Democrat instant-translation effort at Univision was ghastly not only because of the pandering but also because the translation was awful. Carlos did an excellent job translating but also bringing out Fred’s points at the same time as the other candidates.

While the average Spanish-speaking voter probably won’t need the liveblogging because they already know English, the liveblogging in Spanish apprears to be a useful tool to inform newly arrived residents to the US on the campaign’s positions. Currently, as Florida residents are well aware, there’s a significant influx of new (legal) residents coming in from Venezuela and other South American countries. The Thompson campaign has an innovative approach, and it’s starting to show.

John McCain got a Standing O:

Fox News did a woefully inadecuate job of allotting time to the candidates. Ed Morrissey noticed, too. I wish the media would pay more attention to Duncan Hunter, who is well informed on national security, immigration and the role of government.

But at least we finally got a debate.

Meanwhile, while the debate was on, our boys (and girls) in Iraq were busy smashing a big Iranian backed militia base in Sadr City

Memeorandum, however, only sees the debate through the Hillary prism.
Theo Spark has this:

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Filed Under: Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, Iran, Iraq, John McCain, Republicans, Rudolph Giuliani

October 22, 2007 By Fausta

Cheating husbands and all that

Language alert:
While I consistently strive to maintain a certain leve of discourse in this blog, the quotes in this post are unedited for cursing and coarse language

Rep. Charles Rangel Apparently Refers to Giuliani as a ‘Cheating Goddamn Husband’

Apparently? Did he, or didn’t he say it?

Well, let’s take a look: Rudy’s Doin[‘ It!
Battle Stations! Shocked Cacophony Among New York Democrats That Rudy They Know May Actually Become Republican Candidate; ‘Romney Is Entitled to Three Wives,’ Says Charlie Rangel

Referring to Andrew Giuliani’s reportedly distant relationship with his father since the ugly bust-up of Mr. Giuliani’s marriage with Donna Hanover, Mr. Rangel said it was because “sons respect and admire their fathers, but they love their mothers against cheating goddamn husbands.”

And touching on another of Mr. Giuliani’s public difficulties – Mr. Giuliani’s close association with Bernard Kerik, the disgraced former police commissioner – Mr. Rangel said he regretted that all the personal problems surfaced so soon in the electoral process. “I’m sorry this damned thing turned out so early because, really, just like Kerik, it would have bombed his ass out,” said Mr. Rangel.

But Mr. Rangel said he still looked forward to Mr. Giuliani’s Republican opponents making an issue of his infidelity – “Romney could say, ‘I’m entitled to three wives,'” Mr. Rangel said – and said that when it came to abortion, “The church will take care of his ass all alone.”

Such is Charlie Rangel’s concern for the public morals and the high level of political discourse that he can not restrain his opprobrium.

Thanks, Charlie; where were you in ’98?

Pejman‘s asking a similar question.
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Filed Under: Democrats, Republicans, Rudolph Giuliani

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