'Obama, Adeptly Juggling a Soccer Ball, as His Aides Helped Him Juggle His Agenda'

AP's stenographers do their best to prop up Obama.

Immersing himself in Brazil's poverty and pride, President Barack Obama on Sunday held up the South American nation as a model of democratic change in a time of uprisings and crackdowns across the Arab world and yet another war front for the United States.

From Rio's glamorous beaches to a notorious slum to an elegant theater, Obama glimpsed the city's cultural extremes and offered the kind of personal engagement that can pay political dividends for years. Less than one day after announcing U.S. military strikes against Libya's government, Obama made time to kick a soccer ball around with kids in a shantytown.

The competing stories of Obama's itinerary - a war front in Africa, an economic commitment to South America - divided his time in incongruous ways. By morning, he spoke with his security team about the international assault against Moammar Gadhafi's defenses; by night, he was to stand atop a mountain and admire Rio's world famous statue of Jesus.

Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes pounded faraway Libya.

It was all summed up by one image: Obama, adeptly juggling a soccer ball, as his aides helped him juggle his agenda.

It perfectly sums up his presidency: Playing games while the adults do the heavy lifting.

When Did the Brazilians Becomes Such Prudes?

I'm having trouble getting this one straight. Here we are talking about Brazil, notorious for the hot bikini babes and supermodels where seemingly anything goes, ans this young lady gets expelled from her university for wearing this dress?

The video is in Portuguese without subtitles, but it appears to be from some type of news or Oprah-type program.

In Brazil, famed for its tiny bikinis and carefree attitude, a university student has been expelled after violent protests by students outraged at the short outfit she wore on campus.

The Universidade Bandeirante (Uniban) said it had expelled the student, Geysi Villa Nova Arruda, 20, for "flagrant disrespect of ethical principles, academic dignity and morality," in a statement published in some Sunday newspapers.

Her dress sparked student protests on October 22 in this largely Roman Catholic country.

A video showed Arruda sitting in a classroom in a mid-thigh length red dress, then six military police officers protecting her as she left the campus wearing a white jacket. A line of students stood by chanting "whore."

Another video showed a mob stopping and kicking her car and blocking her when she tried to escape on foot.

Comments on Brazilian websites pointed out the irony of the hatred directed at Arruda by fellow students in a nation obsessed with physical beauty and said the university's actions were unfair.

"Pure hypocrisy ... Once February and the Carnival comes round everyone will be naked and no one will find it abnormal," said one comment posted by a reader on the O Globo news website.

What's going on here? Have elements of the Taliban made their way into Brazilian universities? Besides, her outfit is pretty tame compared to the skin I see flaunted all across this country. I'd rather look at her knees than see some muffin-topped slob stuffed into ill-fitting jeans.

More video:

Now That's Some Hard Currency

Odd news of the day from Brazil.

A woman survived a shootout in Brazil, after the impact of a bullet was absorbed by the money she had stuffed in her bra. 58-year-old Ivonete Pereira was travelling on a bus in Salvador, the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia, when two armed robbers tried to hold up the bus.

Because she knew that bus robberies were common in the region, Pereira decided to hide 150 reals (around £46) rolled up inside her bra.

When the robbers started their attempted hold-up, a shootout began with a nearby police officer, and Pereira was hit by a stray bullet. However, the cash in her bra slowed it down enough that she survived - although she had to be taken to hospital to have the bullet removed.

Not so lucky was a retired police sergeant who was killed in the shootout.

Drug Lords Fed Victims to Gators

Yuck.

Alligators kept in the home of a suspected Brazilian drug lord were used to terrorize neighbors and dispose of murder victims, Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper said.

The alligators, measuring 80 and 40 centimeters (32 and 16 inches) long, were discovered by Rio de Janeiro police, along with a machine gun, cocaine and three grenades, in the slum house of a man identified only by his nickname, ``Spider,'' Folha reported, citing authorities.

Police struggled for 20 minutes to bring one of the reptiles under control after it escaped by jumping from the back of a police truck, Folha said. Police nicknamed the animals Celso and Maia, after the two officers who led the sting operation.

Police chief Ronaldo de Oliveira told Folha that other drug gangs have allegedly kept alligators to terrorize their victims and local residents.

Although on the upside, this may be a good way to dispose of the media.

Why the Middle East is Afraid of Brazil

Much as been made of the discovery of some new oil fields off the coast of Brazil lately, even though they haven't started tapping into it yet, but it appears our friends in the Middle East are also very nervous about what this means for them.

America's Arab allies may be ill-advised to count on the presence of U.S. forces being permanent. America's enemies in the Middle East might foresee a day in which the Great Satan boards his ships and goes home, leaving the region to its fate.

What the author also hints at with this statement is that without the Americans fighting their battles for them the Arabs government might be in trouble without our presence.

What would cause us to get on our ships and leave? Simple, the ability to fill all of oil needs from right here in our hemisphere and no longer have to rely on the whims and volatile Arab countries for it.

The author sums it up this way.

And what would that fate be? If the main reason for America's military presence in the region has been dependence on oil, there are other oil-hungry powers. The three biggest customers for the oil of the Gulf will be China, Japan and India, and they have a keen a strategic interest in ensuring a reliable supply.

The problem is that there are three of them, and the two most populous, India and China, are developing almost inexhaustible appetites for imported oil. There is already a quiet arms race underway between them in the Indian Ocean, with China building ports that look like naval bases in Pakistan and Myanmar, and India building aircraft carriers. If the Americans turn away, and India and China rush in to fill the vacuum and secure their access to oil, the Arab world may yet come to look back on the American era in the region as a golden age.

Golden Age indeed.

I still would rather we start tapping into our own oil in the Gulf of Mexico and ANWR and, more importantly, build some more refineries. Sure we need to pursue other sources for our energy needs also but until that technology and ability is available we need to make the best use of what we have at our fingertips.

Huge Oil Field Found Off Brazil

There has apparently been a huge new oil find off Brazil.

Brazil has discovered what could be the third biggest oil reserve in the world, according to the head of the country's National Petroleum Agency.

The deep-sea find by state-run oil firm Petrobras could yield 33 billion barrels in reserves.

This is a significant event in my view for several reasons, other than the obvious.

* First, it shows that contrary to the belief of some, the world is not running out of oil any time soon. So the panic to go find some expensive alternative energy source is a waste of time and money right now. Maybe in another 50 or 100 years, but not now.

* Second, the economic laws of supply and demand still work. The higher world price of oil (and the related profits) encourages more supply and therefore more oil exploration. The solution to high energy costs is increase supply, and that is accomplished via the incentive of profit and prices.

* Third, the Congressional hearings going after oil executives is a waste of time if your interest is truly in getting energy prices lower. Rather than grandstanding on camera for the public, Congress should be encouraging the oil companies to do more exploration and doing everything they can to help them in that activity.

* Fourth, the promise of certain socialistic Presidential candidates to punish oil companies for making a profit and increasing taxes on them if elected is actually counter productive to lowering energy prices. Suppose you run an oil company and Hillary gets elected and raises your corporate taxes. What possible motivation do you have to do more oil exploration now? None. Absolutely none. In fact, you have every motivation in that scenario to leave as much oil in the ground as possible and wait for that administration to run it's course and leave office. In the world of macroeconomics, 4 or 8 years is a fairly short time.

So, the solution to high energy costs is to just let the free market and the laws of supply and demand work their magic, as so eloquently described in 1776 by Adam Smith with his "Invisible Hand" theory.

Use a Condom and Save the Rainforest

The treehuggers must be kvelling over this.

The Brazilian government began producing condoms on Monday using rubber from trees in the Amazon, a move it said would help preserve the world's largest rainforest and cut dependence on imported contraceptives given away to fight AIDS.

Brazil's first government-run condom factory, located in northwestern Acre state, will produce 100 million condoms a year, the health ministry said in a statement.

The latex comes from the Chico Mendes reserve, named after a conservationist and rubber tapper killed in 1988 by ranchers. The government says the condoms would be the only ones made of latex harvested from a tropical forest.

Environmentalists say tapping native rubber trees helps generate income for Amazon residents and reduces pressure to fell trees. More than 550 families will earn a total of 2.2 million reais ($1.3 million) annually producing condoms, the ministry said.

The intention is also to reduce Brazil's dependence on imported condoms, which are distributed free as part of a national program to combat AIDS.

The government says it is the world's largest single buyer of condoms. It purchased 1 billion this year to be distributed over the next two years, a health ministry spokesman said.

Carnival Float 'Commemorates' Holocaust

Nothing quite brings out the festive mood of Carnival down in Brazil like a float depicting images of the Holocaust.

Seriously folks, there's a time and place to observe the Holocaust, and this isn't it.

A Carnival float with a pile of model dead bodies commemorating the Holocaust is causing unease before the lavish parades in Rio de Janeiro this weekend.

The Viradouro samba organization, or school, plans to feature the grim display when it marches in the Sambadrome parade strip on Sunday, despite objections from a local Jewish group.

"Really, it makes no sense addressing this theme with drums and dancing girls," said Sergio Niskier, president of the Israelite Federation in Rio de Janeiro state, referring to the slaughter of Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

"There are still survivors of that horror who have the marks of that tragedy on their skin," he said.

Rio's Carnival is famed for the parades by samba schools with glitzy floats and costumes and street parties where costumed revelers drink and dance all night.

The elaborately decorated floats are a key part of each samba school's presentation, along with thousands of dancers and drummers led by near naked Carnival queens.

Viradouro insisted its Holocaust float is not meant to offend anyone.

Supply and Demand? What's That?

Stop the presses! This just in: the laws of supply and demand still work.

'Huge' oil field found off Brazil

A huge natural gas field has been found a short distance off Rio de Janeiro's coastline, Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, says.
The company believes the new field, Jupiter, could match the recently discovered Tupi oil field in size.

Tupi is thought to be one of the largest fields discovered in the past 20 years.

A lot of crude oil is probably there, too.

Petrobras estimates Tupi contains between five and eight billion barrels of light oil.

The bottom line is the world's known oil/gas reserves just got a lot bigger, while a lot of the world is still yet unexplored for these resources.

So, as the price of energy rises around the world, the higher price/profit motivates further exploration. The higher prices bring into play possible deposits that previously were not economical to tap.

Now they are.

So rather than fermenting our corn fields into fuel, maybe we would be better served searching for more oil instead.

Regardless, it's amazing how the free market provides solutions to problems, every time it's tried.

BDS, Brazilian Style

President Bush went down to Brazil today and sure enough, the usual coterie of leftwing whiners were there to greet him, mouthing the usual pap.

Police clashed Thursday with students, environmentalists and left-leaning Brazilians protesting a visit by President Bush and his push for an ethanol energy alliance with Latin America's largest nation.

Riot police fired tear gas at protesters in Sao Paulo after more than 6,000 people held a largely peaceful march, sending hundreds of demonstrators fleeing and ducking into businesses to avoid the gas.

The fun wasn't just contained to Brazil. They're already warming up in Colombia.

Clashes between police and anti-Bush protesters were also reported in Colombia, where Bush is scheduled to visit on Sunday as part of his five-nation tour to Latin America.

Bush has spoken approvingly of Brazil's ethanol program, which powers eight out of every 10 new Brazilian cars. The proposed accord is meant to help turn ethanol into an internationally traded commodity and to promote sugarcane-based ethanol production in Central America and the Caribbean.

In Sao Paulo, some carried stalks of sugarcane — used to make ethanol — and a banner reading: "For every liter of ethanol produced, 4 liters of fresh water are consumed, monoculture is destroying the nation's greatest asset."

And in the southern city of Porto Alegre, more than 500 people yelled "Get out, imperialist!" as they marched to a Citigroup Inc. bank branch and burned an effigy of Bush.

Fearing that Brazil may clear pristine jungle to increase sugarcane cultivation for ethanol, Greenpeace activists hung a huge banner warning against increased reliance on ethanol as an alternative fuel. They placed the banner on a monument to the 17th century Portuguese explorers who conquered Brazil's Indians in search of gold and gems.

"We know that Bush and the United States are known for exploiting weaker countries into deals that will only benefit themselves without worrying about the environment," said Mariana Schwarz, a 25-year-old publicist.

"Bush and the United States go to war to control oil reserves, and now Bush and his pals are trying to control the production of ethanol in Brazil. And that has to be stopped," said Suzanne Pereira dos Santos, an activist with Brazil's Landless Workers Movement.

No blood for ethanol!

Meanwhile, we also see how much good Bush's pandering to Mexico has done.

And in Mexico City, which Bush is scheduled to visit Tuesday, about two dozen demonstrators gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy chanting slogans against the U.S. project to construct border fences and Bush's visit.

"Why is he coming here? It makes no sense, it's unreasonable, after all he's done," said protest leader Roman Diaz Vazquez, a lawyer. "We don't like him. Why is he coming, after he ordered the construction of the border wall?"

Carmelo Ramriez Reyes showed up for the protest in a devil's mask, carrying a placard reading "My name is George Bush, killer of Mexicans."