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The PJ Tatler

by
Bryan Preston

Bio

August 17, 2012 - 9:42 am

Compare the nearly 1,200-word “Fact Sheet” published this week by the U.S. embassy in Brazil with the last Background Note on Brazil written during the George W. Bush Administration.

The 4,100-word Bush document, chock full of facts and figures helpful in analyzing the country and its importance to the U.S., never once mentions the name of any U.S. President. The 300-word section on U.S.–Brazil relations takes up about 7 percent of the document.

Conversely, fully 70 percent (830 words) of the Brazil Fact Sheet, which is focused exclusively on U.S. relations with Brazil, discusses President Obama either directly by name (twice!) or in the context of the plethora of programs his Administration has launched with Brazil, including a shared “commitment to combat discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) status; to advance gender equality; a bilateral instrument that targets racism; support for HIV/AIDS prevention, promotion of clean energy technologies in Brazil, and mitigation of climate change.”

There is no mention, however, of how much these many programs are costing the American taxpayer.

Of course, the degree of glowing prose about a country’s relationship with the U.S. might depend on the political philosophy of the government. While the center-left government of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, which took office in 2011, warrants buckets of praise, the center-right government of Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, elected in 2010, gets much less ink (522 words) ,and the first paragraph dwells on the long-past bad old days in Chile under Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.
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