1. To the distinguished gentlemen from California, and all his fat-cat funding agents and his nitwit followers, you can flush your damn tea, or in the words of the great Van Morrison,

"You can take all the tea in china
Put it in a big brown bag for me
Sail right around the seven oceans
Drop it straight into the deep blue sea"

2. Anybody ain't seen Obama's video above, hit the play button. Maybe he really is among our greatest presidents, or indeed possibly our greatest.

Right-Wingers Push to Replace Water Boarding With Tea Bagging
http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=6928

Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com reports that there were just over 300,000 teaparty attendees nationwide.

Compare that that to the number of people who attended Obama's inaugeration. What was that? One and a half million or so? All in one city? It was a lot harder to get to Washington than for the tea baggers to get out of bed and go downtown.

Somehow close to one-third of a million tea party attendees nationwide doesn't seem like much, unless perhaps the political reporters have a slow day and have to fill the news hole with any old garbage just to keep the space from being empty.

That's a pretty backhanded comment by Chavez. He should shut his trap since Obama is more popluar in his own country than he is.

Don't forget to go to You Tube and rate the Republican response. You can also leave a comment.

Galeano's book is genius. With Chavez wagging a Chomsky book at the UN and now giving Obama a Galeano work, I've gotta say that's a huge step up from My Pet Goat.

I have no problem with improving, even normalizing, relations with Cuba, but I could have done without the Chavez handshake.

"they've had enough of the high taxes and borrowing to bankroll Washington's spending spree."

Where was this concern when Bush was running up the defeceit?

The guy is like Clinton, the best republicans we ever had.

Chavez is a...hmmm.

I could do w/o the handshake as well, but I'm sure the wingers will milk it for all it (aint) worth. Chavez is a chump.

But, Obama already put him in his place by his reaction to the book exchange-the subtlety of which will likely be lost on the knuckledraggers...

I'm sure the Republicans will say Obama is showing weakness for shaking Chavez's hand, but what was Obama supposed to do--refuse the handshake? I'm tired of Republicans acting like they know so much about foreign policy and they had almost the entire world hating us.

McCarthy's empty-rhetoric infomercial was delivered in an openly snide, sarcastic and insincere manner that would occlude any legitimate message, if he had one. Since he didn't, "snide, sarcastic and insincere" is the message. Par for the GOP course these days.

"...and we know that when the government spends our hard-earned tax money, we should be guaranteed accountability. That's why House Republicans are unveiling Washington Watch, a new website tracking misuse of taxpayer dollars and stimulus waste."

That says it all. The message is entirely negative. The public face of the GOP has no interest in informing the public in an honest, evenhanded or comprehensive fashion, but only in identifying targets and lobbing snarkbombs. This is a political party whose radical rightist leadership has become intentionally corrosive to plurality, cooperation, and, as a result, the Union itself - whether they admit it (even to themselves) or not. Many among them are openly seeking to foment an overthrow of the government, employing only the thinnest veil of pretense to mask this fact.

Meanwhile, the "terrorist organizations"* are watching all of this with keen interest. Why? Because if our society collapsed upon itself, our governmental and commercial interests would become far weaker abroad as the crisis at home took precedent over all else. Hence, they would have much less incentive to attack us here again, as they will have a much clearer path toward accomplishing their primary goal: throwing off the mantle of "global" (foreign) interests, and achieving uncontested control over their local resources - resources which (need I even say it?) are absolutely vital to maintaining our accustomed way of life.

I really only see a few directions this can go:

• The radical rightists get what they have been itching for: a crumbling of the social order, which is a necessary precursor to establishing a more authoritarian one. They would prefer this episode to be brief - a coup, rather than a war - because that would leave our globally deployed military forces intact enough to prevent the "terrorist organizations" from achieving their goals. (In this case, expect more terrorist attacks on our soil.)


• The radical rightists get what they've been itching for, but it spirals out of their control and the US descends into civil war. (In this case, we become a self-terrorizing nation, and while we weaken ourselves, the Middle East power bloc consolidates.)


• Things spiral out of everybody's control, and we lay waste to the planet.


• The slimmest possibility: The US and its subsidiary and interest-convergent powers are eventually forced to accept a much-needed shift in the global power structure, away from imperialism. The rich nations become poorer, but the world economy gradually becomes more stable.

Well, that was a bit more than I intended to say at first. Off-topic? Um, no. Every major story in the news is a pinhole-camera story about this.

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*The term "terrorist organization" is such a misnomer - a half-truth intended to whip up fear and obscure a larger reality, if ever there were one. It's almost as bad as claiming that "they hate our freedom", when in fact they hate that our freedom = their poverty. And don't even whine to me about how that's their own fault, not ours. We have systematically propped up tyrants of resource-rich countries because they're far cheaper to pay off than governments that represent their entire populations. Sorry if the truth hurts.

Fact is, the "terrorist organizations" are the ideological twins of our own gun-totin' radical rightists. And here's the rub: neither group is really wrong to be pissed off! (I just wish our domestic had a bigger-picture understanding of who they should be pissed off at.)

The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo Galeno.

This is a classic piece of literature that every educated Latin American has read or at least knows about. Think of Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck and The Open Veins is a whole two or three levels above. Anyone who dismisses it as "leftist literature" is woefully ignorant.

If Obama ever wants to understand and get along with Latin America, he would do well to read that book so that he understands the history that drives the traditions and attitudes here. He couldn't find a more concise source explaining the political and social milieu and why things happen the way they do. To try to interact politically with Latin America without knowing what's in that book is like interacting with the US without any knowledge of the Revolution or the Civil War.