Now for Brazil's Barack Obamas

Welcome to Obama-mania, Brazil-style. Few countries have embraced the idea of the US's first black president as enthusiastically as Brazil, a country with one of the largest Afro-descendant populations on Earth yet where black faces remain a minority in politics. Obama T-shirts are everywhere while chat shows and newspaper columns are filled with talk of the 47-year-old Illinois senator.

NO wonder Brasil is so f’ed up!

There are some cultural things about Brasil/Brazil that I don't
"get" as a calm "Flyover Country" guy.

But they've been forging ahead in a number of ways:

1. Going for ethanol for fuel (which makes sense for their
location on the earth). And this was at least in the early 1990s,
as documented in "Chemical And Engineering News" (the main publication
of The American Chemical Society).
(IMHO, ethanol in fuel doesn't make much sense in the USA until
cellulosic or other feed-stuffs than valuable corn is the new
"ethanol fuel source".)

2. Exploring of their shores to find a BIG oil/petroleum
field. While we still have MORONS fighting their fried-brains
ideological struggle to keep us from drilling off-shore in
many areas (and on-shore as well!!!).

3. Going ahead with manufacture of very-good quality export goods...
such as the Taurus pistols/revolvers that are often the "gun-porn"
stars of FR's "banglist" threads.
Not to mention manufacture of Embrear (sp?) small-to-medium
commercial aircraft.
They've advanced a fair bit from their products of a couple of decades
ago...including the commuter airplane that killed Senator John
Tower (and other passengers).
One should note that (IIRC), that Embrear plane crashed due to
poor maintenance.

AND

4. Their economy, although maybe due to a fair amount of good luck
is doing well enough to lure Illegal-Immgrants in America
(Boston, MA in particular) to move back home and seek their fortunes
in their homeland.

5. And Brasil/Brazil is opening up to a lot of agricultural
enterprise...CNBC has aired a story about an Iowa State U. grad
that (in essence) took a leave-of-absence from the family farm
and is now building a HUGE and PROFITABLE ag enterprise in districts
of Brasil that were thought to be unproductive for agriculture
a few years ago.
The CNBC profile showed him to be a "rock star" when he appears
at agriculture meetings in the USA (and feared a bit by US farmers
that fear one of their own bringing more competition into the
agricultural marketplace.

My general impression of Brasil is that literally and figuratively
it's a long way from the USA.
But unlike some other places, headed in the right direction.
Well, in the USA-love-of-improvement sort of way.
(of course, that means Democrats would hate my analysis)

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