Obama's new argument abroad: America is sorry.

The following passage from Barack Obama’s speech to Latin American leaders will be one of those Rorshach tests for political perspective. Those who hated the Bush administration enough will applaud it; those who think America is usually wrong will cheer; and the rest of us will shake our heads:

"While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. (Applause.)"

Obama’s apologizing for being dictatorial … to Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and the Castros. As for “dictat[ing] our terms,” we used to call that defending American interests. When negotiating, people try to get the best terms for themselves. We didn’t send gunboats to Venezuela or Bolivia during the Bush administration, and the only people seizing assets over the last eight years have been the Venezuelans under Chavez.

Translation: Bush was mean and had the balls to put pressure on unstable regimes, but Obama is a good saviour who cares more about image than reality, so he's going to pursue a middle path and ask Chavez to become his partner in action.

That is the reasoning of a true hipster who is about to be fooled, big time. Making an official apology to a self-proclaimed dictatorial crook, who will use all options available to play the West down and promote his own socialist loser ideology, how clueless can you get? Chavez, playing gentleman, even gave Obama a piece of his propaganda artillery:

President Barack Obama says he came to a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders to listen and learn about a region he'd never visited. On Saturday, Hugo Chavez gave him some reading material that the Venezuelan president thinks will help.

The socialist leader presented Obama with a hardcover edition of "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," by famed Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano.

Chavez said he inscribed the book: "For Obama, with warm regards."

How charming. And guess what's inside:

Passages from "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent":

_"Development develops inequality."

_"The international division of labor is that some countries specialize in winning and others losing."

_"The International Monetary Fund was created to institutionalize the financial domination of Wall Street over the entire planet when, at the end of World War II, the dollar began its hegemony as the international currency. It was never unfaithful to its master."

Same old NWO conspiracy rant, mixed with fatherland propaganda and socialist utopianism. I'm sure our clueless President has got something to read before bedtime now, possibly influencing him in increasing government spending so we can enjoy Weimar-style inflation.

Watch Brett Steven's analysis of Obama come true:

McCain was an accurate plodder, while Obama is a flashy but corrupt insider, a hipster.

A hipster is someone who does a lot of talking but lags behind in the substance department. The masses praise hipsters in power because they (a) divert the attention away from real issues and (b) suggest everything will be fine if we just unite under vague and pleasant illusions. Obama's new foreign policy argument, perhaps more inaccurate than vague: “I'm sorry”.