[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Brazil, which is increasingly flexing its muscles as its economy becomes more powerful, refuses to recognize the vote.

Sometimes I get the feeling Obama is not telling us everything that is going on with Brazil:

WSJ: If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire....Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.

[livius]

Lula is one of the biggest leftists in LatAm, but he’s not quite as blustery as Chavez and the gang, so he attracts less attention. He actually did manage to get a grip on some of Brazil’s problems (such as inflation) when he first took office and was even opposed by the unions because he wasn’t leftist enough. But he has quietly become more and more left-wing over the years and I think he is now acting as Obama’s proxy in LatAm.

Hugo is just too nutty to be easy to sell to the American public, so I think Obama has had to distance himself from him, although there is no doubt at all that his sympathies are with Chavez. Venezuela was the first to want to interfere in Honduras, but its threats to invade simply stimulated Honduran resistance.

Lula’s Brazil, on the other hand, is like Obama: sneaky and ruthless. Slipping Zelaya into the embassy there was a master-stroke. Obama is simply rewarding Brazil and I think we will see more of this in the future.