Obama's Personality Cult, Socialism, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and Argentina's Death Wish

Senator Obama is an undisputed cult leader. Cult leaders are common in third world politics in places such as Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Peronist Argentina. But they always come to a bad end due to overreach.

Zimbabwe's Mugabe is finally reaching the logical extreme of his own corrupt power hunger, and he has taken his nation all the way down with him. He deserves the fate of Mussolini or Ceausescu. Instead, he will probably live out the rest of his years in comfort at the expense his own country's ruin.

Argentina was once a rich country, with excellent prospects for the future. Peronist populist socialism--in its various revivals--will simply not let go of the chokehold on Argentina's potential wealth. The latest brainless twit dictator in Argentina is Christina Fernandez de Kirchner. She is destroying the country more by the minute.

First, consider that Fernandez is dangerously ignorant of the impact of taxes on any business, having spent her entire life as a politician in cities. Combined with the concentrated power of her Peronist party, which controls every institution in the country, it's little wonder that she has little inclination to listen.

But declining production is likely to be its own message. Already, there is so much micromanaging of Argentina's agriculture that the only profitable areas left are in relatively uncomplicated export crops of soya and sunflowers — 70% to 90% of which are exported.

But three tax hikes on exports in six months, along with VAT taxes, income taxes, capital costs and salaries, are likely to leave no net profit for Argentina's last dynamic producers in agriculture....Fernandez has fixed socialist notions of big farms being capitalistically bad and has tried to make farmers halt their strike based on her proposed subsidies to "small" farmers. ___IBD

Of course the nitwit femme-dictator will not stop until she is overthrown, or until the entire nation is ruined. She and Obama think a lot alike. Chavez in Venezuela would be ruined already if not for a ready supply of oil that he can plunder.

But Argentina is the model that Obama is likely to follow. Take a rich country, decide to raise taxes on all productive sectors to extortionate levels, then reap the praise of your toady "yes men and women" while the country collapses in slo-mo.

Watch while Argentina repeats one of its worst foreign policy mistakes ever--its war against the UK over the Falkland Islands. Now that oil has been discovered in the vicinity, Argentina has decided even more firmly that it must have the Falklands back.

Kirchner called for Argentina to strengthen its representation in international bodies to denounce "this shameful colonial enclave in the 21st century."

And Vice President Julio Cobos said in the southern city of Rio Grande that "we must recover this territory that is ours, that belongs to us."

The comments came as Kirchner faces her own woes, battling against farmers who have barricaded roads in a protest against a stiff tax hike on soybean exports.

The conflict has created shortages of meat and other staples in Buenos Aires and elsewhere, and tested the social fabric, with pro- and anti-government supporters holding dueling rallies.

Foreign Minister Jorge Taina said, meanwhile, that Argentina was awaiting authorization from Britain to allow families of Argentine military personnel killed in the war to fly to the islands for the inauguration of a memorial.

London is insisting the travel be carried out by ship, but Buenos Aires has pointed out that many of the relatives are elderly and would find a long return sea voyage too tough. ___Source

The Falklands are quite small, and a military invasion could be spear-headed by an air dropped commando force under cover of a legitimate series of air flights. No wonder the UK is concerned about the timing of this "memorial inauguration."

The utter foolishness of Fernandez and her Peronist cohorts is astounding. If Argentina was located closer to Venezuela, I would wonder about a possible military alliance between the socialist governments, in a runup to war in the South Atlantic. But all Venezuela could do to assist the Peronists would be to intercept any naval task force that the UK might send to the Falklands. If that happened, the US would probably step in and punish Chavez.

But that assumes that a rational US president would be occupying the White House. A President Obama--rich on rhetoric but poor in experience and rational perspective--would be clueless as to how to respond to such a situation. So expect Argentina to wait until after the US elections in November.

Obama as world leader? If you think that Bush's administration was incompetent, you have not seen incompetence until you see an Obama administration in action.