that is – so – yesterday.

“That is so yesterday,” quipped the Secretary of State. It was a playful response to the issue of whether America should be isolating Latin American leaders like Hugo Chavez.

The artist formerly known as Hillary Rodham Clinton has caused the World Community to gush with praise. Her whirlwind globetrot, informally dubbed the “Hey, My Bad,” 2009 tour has been defined for its conciliatory message: You were right, World Community, America does suck, and let me show you how much (it turns out, Monica taught her a thing or two.).

In China, the nation which leads Asia in greenhouse gas emissions, Clinton emitted some gas of her own, condemning America for being the world’s leading emitter. In Indonesia, Clinton bashed America’s ineffective sanctions against Myanmar. Myanmar is a place of limestone landscapes, peppered with bamboo, mangrove and coconut that flourish in the monsoon-environment. Best of all, it is a squalid Marxist hellhole, currently being raped and plundered by military thugs who have spent some forty years exploiting the resources and suppressing every citizen attempt at revolt. Truly, it is about time America take some responsibility for her big-mean sanctions.

As for Iran, Clinton made sure to point out that America’s condemnations have not caused the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Surely, America must change her ways.

But it was Latin America where Clinton shined. In Mexico, she blamed America’s appetite for illegal drugs on the narcotics trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border. Never mind – uh, what do they call that? – the… source of the drugs. We really needn’t concern ourselves with such petty issues (such as where all the drugs are originating, and which LATIN AMERICAN nations have spectacularly failed at regulating the drug cartels).

No, the real concern – what’s really at issue – is that many Americans do a lot of drugs: a fact put squarely on display throughout the Secretary of State’s world tour.

As for building bridges with Chavez, Clinton called for America to “put ideology aside,” because “that is so yesterday.”

Chavez, a socialist demagogue who once attempted a bid for a lifetime dictatorship in Venezuela, has been hostile to the U.S. throughout the last decade (once calling President George Bush the “devil” while speaking before the UN in New York City.).

In 2007, the state department (that’s the one that the Secretary of State is actually in charge of) issues a Human Rights report, reporting that more than 6,000 have been killed by Chavez’s security forces in the last five years. It also reported 11 complaints of torture; 692 complaints of ‘cruel and degrading treatment’ (down from the previous year); that a Venezuelan Mayor, and political opponent of Chavez’s, is seeking political asylum in Peru for fear of the dictator; while another Mayor was barred from his office by Chavez’s police force. His other “reforms” include a tightening grip on the nation’s media as well as blacklisting and investigating political opponents.

Last week, after a warm embrace, Chavez handed President Obama “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

(The book documents the atrocities committed by Western nations, including the U.S., against Latin America. Indeed, it ought to fairly document the vile influence of Europe which cruelly put an end to the fun-and-fancy-free ancient barbarism of human sacrifice and cannibalism, practiced by the Aztecs and the Mayans.).

Well, as it happens, the President just died when he heard that Hillary was throwing this international soiree with the World Community without inviting him. He may have joined late – but Obama was the show stopper.

In Trinidad, President Obama silently sat through a fifty minutes of invective against America’s terrorism, delivered by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Obama, of course, came prepared with his usual arsenal of glib retorts. “I’m thankful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was 3 months old,” he said. As for Venezuela, the President assured that this country poses no serious threat to the U.S. – surely a handshake wasn’t a breach of national security. Our defense budget it, of course, six hundred times that of Venezuela’s, Obama stressed.

I’m not sure when it became U.S. policy to only condemn those whom we fear militarily. But the current policy of executive-level groveling is pathetic. Even worse was the World Community’s response to these spectacles.

Leonel Fernandez, president of Dominican Republic, praised Secretary Clinton’s “courage” and cooed over President Obama. Obama, he said is “paving a new road,” with Cuba. Obama recognizes, “the fact that previous policies have failed. Fifty years of a policy that has not generated the originally sought purposes can be called a failure.”

What exactly do these people think we were “originally” seeking in Cuba? Cuba a piss-ant banana colony off our southern coast. It has been headed by the fascist pawn of Nikita Khrushchev for most of the last sixty years. Had the Bay of Pigs been a success, and Castro been ousted, who knows how much better the lives of the Cuban people may have been. (At the very least, they’d have had one less slobbering sloth putter his wide load down there for a propaganda film about Cuba’s marvelous healthcare.).

But, American containment of Cuba, during the Cold War, was a policy that worked fantastically – especially as America spent the nineteen-eighties stopping the Communist dominoes from falling in Latin America. Today, however, our president is pushing them back down, and falling to his knees at the same time.

Ortega, of course, had beat Obama and Clinton to the love fest for Fidel by about thirty years. In the eighties, he was a leader of the radical Sandinista National Liberation Front, which made several attempts at a Marxist coup d’état in Nicaragua. In 2006, they finally made it by winning 38% in the national elections.

When asked for comment after Ortega’s verbal assault, Clinton said, “I thought the cultural performance was fascinating.” She went on, “To have those first-class Caribbean entertainers all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space. I was overwhelmed.”

Overwhelmed.