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The Significance of President Obama Praising Lula's "Good Looks"
April 02, 2009 6:37 AM
"That's my man right here," President Obama said this morning at the G-20 summit as Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva approached him. "Love this guy. He's the most popular politican on earth. It's because of his good looks."
Lula, it should be noted, is hardly the George Clooney of the G-20. But beyond that, the moment was quite telling in terms of the understanding that these leaders have for one another's domestic political considerations.
A few days ago, Lula said that the global economic crisis "was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of people that are white, blue-eyed, that before the crisis looked like they knew everything about economics."
‘Now they have demonstrated that they don’t know anything about economics," said Lula, adding that "no black man or woman, no indigenous person, no poor person" can be held responsible.
Administration sources say that one of the interesting dynamics playing out here is the rhetoric of these G-20 leaders versus the reality of what they and their representatives are saying behind the scenes.
"I was in Brazil last week," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday, "and I think President Lula will forgive me for saying this -- he said to me, 'When I was leader of the trade unions, I blamed the government; when I became leader of the opposition, I blamed the government; when I became the government, I blamed Europe and America.' And he recognizes, as we do, that this is a global problem."
President Obama alluded to this as well when asked about the rhetoric coming from the leaders of France and Germany against his push for more global stimulus.
"There have been differences in terms of how should that stimulus be shaped. There have been arguments, for example, among some European countries that because they have more of a social safety net, that some of the countercyclical measures that we took -- for example, unemployment insurance -- were less necessary for them to take," the president said. "But the truth is,...that's just arguing at the margins. The core notion that government has to take some steps to deal with a contracting global marketplace and that we should be promoting growth, that's not in dispute."
The President said, "I know that when you've got a bunch of heads of state talking, it's not visually that interesting...the communiqués are written in sort of dry language, and so there's a great desire to inject some conflict and some drama into the occasion. But the truth of the matter is, is that I think there has been an extraordinary convergence and I'm absolutely confident that the United States, as -- as a peer of these other countries, will help to lead us through this very difficult time."
- jpt
April 2, 2009 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (102)
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Lula is the man, he changed Brazil, and brazilian thinking. Nowadays, we believe that Brazil is a great contry and may contribute with development of the other countries.
Brazil has a nature, petro, etanal, water, forest, and a excellent President.
I believe that in few years brasil will be in the top five.
Lula built news public university and increased eduaction in Brasil. Lula is the best presidente in the story of Latin America.
Lula for Peace Nobel.
Posted by: cesar | Nov 21, 2009 7:46:55 AM
Do not listen what Lula said. Lula does not know anything about economics either. Economics teach us that human behaveoir is unique and do not depends of races or skin colors.
Posted by: Felipe Souza | Apr 17, 2009 8:33:07 PM
I cant believe all the white Americans who have called Lula comments and Obama response racist. Who ran wall street and created all the fake debt instruments that have brought the entire financial world to near collapse? Inner city blacks or Latinos? Or wall street Bankers, most of whom are white. Whites hold most power in the financial world and nothing that was said is not known by most of the world. As a African who has lived in the states i can tell all Wall street is ran by WHITE PEOPLE who have ruined the world. Non-Whites have never ran wall street and the few tokens on the top of companies does not reflect any real power on the part of non, blue eyed white who ran and and still to this day run the system. Fannie mae is a government owned company and the only fortune 500 to have a Black CEO, just 1. Pretty soon ignorant white Americans are going to say Black American run and control the federal reserve. If non-whites ran wall street and this was happening all you would hear is if this money looting was genetic, but since its white it was a isolated event.. White American are such hypocrites and Most of the world knows this. Come here to Canada and ask any White Canadian who caused the crisis, or better yet travel to Asia, Africa, Latin America and ask anyone, from cab driver to Heads of state (Lula, Chavez, castro, Morales all democratically elected) My advice to White America is travel the world and see who most people you meet blame and apologize to the world and the great Brazilian leader for saying what everyone i know knows!!
PS> I love you Lula (Brazil too) and your comments are being talked about all over the world and as gospel regarding who is to blame.
Obama this is not just your man, but the worlds for saying the truth!!!I love both you guys!!!
Posted by: Global Citizen | Apr 8, 2009 4:42:05 PM
Attention Race-Defenders:
What did Lula say?
He said that EVERY person responsible for the crisis is EURO-DESCENDANT.
OOOOOOooooooooooohhhhh, he is promoting ethnic hatred...!!!!!!! Help, help! Someone help the euro-descendants...
Posted by: Geronimo Nodrede | Apr 5, 2009 2:54:38 PM
Lula is uncultured and rude but is NOT innocent and candid as many innocent people here in this forum want to believe. His statement is dangerously racist and is designed to conquer and charm the uncultured and marginalised from the world's wealth people that vote for him and support his "popularity" in Brazil. Mr.Obama should know better than to incentive this kind of perversity, even if his intention was to be elegant and subtly sarcastic. Now, if he was not trying to be sarcastic and he really likes Lula that much, well, then he can take him home and keep him, as far as I'm concerned.
Posted by: Living in Brazil | Apr 4, 2009 2:37:38 PM
The american's grandsons will face a very different country in some years. A spice of goodness and charming "brazilian way-of-life" is now touching these frozen white hearts, and, in tew years unfundamented protecionist politics yill get down. Free borderlines and no more racism or patriotisms. Long life to this comming free world!
Posted by: Say "good bye blue-eyed facists"! | Apr 4, 2009 1:58:42 PM
Sometimes you just have to admit that what you saw or heard is reality and what you hoped and believed was wrong.
I think Mr Obama and Mr Lula share a vision of people who look like ME that is distinctly UNCOMFORTABLE if not downright threatening.
Posted by: Sally | Apr 4, 2009 1:37:29 AM
Sarkozy has two non white women in his cabinet, in a country where there are no more than 10% of the population, and he did spent considerable political capital protecting one of them(Rachida Dati, the Minister of Justice, a top post). Blah, even Bush had nonwhites in posts like Secretary of State and at the Justice Department.
Lula has very few non whites in his cabinet, mostly of them in secundary posts. Marina da Silva, Minister of the Environment, is probally the only nonwhite that really had a powerful cabinet top post, but she wasn´t black.
Lula is a white man, surrounded by whites. Calling him racist because of a single comment is stupid.
Posted by: Andre Kenji | Apr 3, 2009 8:42:37 PM
Much ado about nothing...
Posted by: Kaleigh | Apr 3, 2009 5:46:51 PM
Obama looks stoned on this entire trip. Anyone see the press conference? I didn't think so. The MSM has no clips of his rambling, stuttering, incomprehensible answers.
How do we get the Recall Movement going?
TERM LIMITS FOR ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS!!!
And, yes, I am shouting.
Posted by: Irene Flick | Apr 3, 2009 5:20:09 PM
Brazil and the world would be benefited if the United States were to scrap the farm bill and put pressure on Europe to get rid of the CAP.
The vast majority of Brazilians would be benefited as would many Americans if Brazil were to lower tariffs on high tech foreign products. The reason Brazil does not do this is simple, if better (much better, aside from airplanes) products were to compete with Brazilian ones then Brazil would finally have to deal with education in a serious manner since it makes no sense to spend the bulk of your education budget on free public universities while leaving k-12 behind.
This would force Brazilian university students to pay tuition or student loans like in America and perhaps grow up a little and stop blaming the United States for everything that is wrong with Brazil and the world to instead take a good look at themselves and at how their privileges impede better education for so many others and reduction of tarrifs on industrial and high tech products which in the end hinder Brazilian agri-buisiness, who did their homework unlike American and specially European farmers, and should gain access to those markets and keep jobs in small to middle sized towns instead of having people moving to the slums in the outskirts of Rio and São Paulo and leading miserable violent lives.
But hey I´m just writing about practical things and it seems that neither Lula nor Obama are practical men so on with the back-patting.
Posted by: Alexandre | Apr 3, 2009 1:19:53 PM
Democracy? What democracy? The democracy you mention is long dead, it was killed by people like Nixon, George W. Bush, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former president of Brazil). These people would sell their mothers and were capable of commiting the greatest attrocities in order to maintain their power. Bush killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the middle east just because of oil (neither has he found bio-weapons nor Osama Bin-Laden). Fernando Henrique sold all kinds of energy , telecom and mining facilities in Brazil to his business friends at Multinational corporations and put the money in secret accounts in Luxembourg. I wish the best to Lula and Obama, I truly hope they are different from these terrible politicians.
Posted by: Rob Souza | Apr 3, 2009 12:06:18 PM
Wow, does anybody know what happened back on April 19th, 1775? A bunch of White guys with Blue eyes stood up, bled, died, sacrificed and forged the land and Democracy that today is under attack. So go ahead and place the blame where it belongs.!!???!! We would still be under the control of a Kingdon today if those events did not take place. Maybe they will again soon. Who knows.
Posted by: Reveille | Apr 3, 2009 10:39:59 AM
Isn't Bill Clinton white with blue eyes? hmmm
Posted by: Victoria | Apr 3, 2009 8:38:10 AM
The Audacity!
O'Bama has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
Posted by: W.D. | Apr 3, 2009 8:17:10 AM
I will not call Obama President. He is not MY President. I did not vote for him and I will not acknowledge him as my President. I cannot stand that women he is married to either!!! What worries me is that he was able to fool so many ignorant Americans into voting for him. I am very sad for this Country, and for my grand children that will have to live in what is left of it after that jerk leaves office!
Posted by: buffy30215 | Apr 3, 2009 8:16:57 AM
This is the jerk who called his own granny a "typical white person." What a joke. This muslim is the biggest racist jackass who ever held office anywhere!
Posted by: Tom | Apr 3, 2009 7:55:36 AM
Just people chatting it up during a coffee break. It would be impossible to do that while making perfectly good sense as well.
Posted by: frank burns | Apr 3, 2009 7:38:24 AM
the bottom line for me is that BHO doesn't realize he is being played by the rest of the world leaders.
Maybe he just doesn't get it at all. Had W made the same gaffs as O, the reactions would have been much different.
Goodby to our republic is right about Harold Koh.. watch that one very carefully.
Posted by: Lefty in PA | Apr 3, 2009 6:52:05 AM
Obama is a socialist slimebag who would sell America down any river. He doesn't try now because he doesn't think he can yet but ---- just wait for it!!
Posted by: Phil S. | Apr 3, 2009 6:25:49 AM
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