This Ortega doesn't taste good to me

In my country, the name "Ortega" means Mexican food.

Browse http://www.ortega.com/ for a little while and if you don't start to salivate, then you're either dead or insane.

But there is another Ortega in the world, and he's not a relative, to my knowledge, of those food-making folks, and he tastes foul, to me.

I recently cut out a column from the paper by Mary Anastasia OGrady.

Her bio: http://www.opinionjournal.com/bios/bio_ogrady.html.

The first part of the column: "Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega wants to party like it's 1979. And why not? He's back at the helm of his country, which is once again prime real estate for enemies of the U.S.
Three decades ago it was the Soviets who financed Mr. Ortega's fiesta, in which he and his closest commanders executed the famous "pinata" property grab and ran the country into the ground. His backers this time are a new bunch: Iran and Venezuela. But his hungering for another power trip looks very much the same. After a visit to Tehran last week where he denounced the Yankee imperialists, so too does the threat he presents to U.S. security interests."

The whole thing: http://www.hacer.org/current/Nica25.php

I'm not going to get too much into politics in this blog. I have readers from all over the world, who are going to be of differing political backgrounds. I don't expect them to wave American flags or agree with me all the time or even ever, at all. And I am capable of recognizing that my country has made many mistakes in its history.

But I think any rational person is disturbed by the global problem of Islamic fundamentalism. And this article reveals a disturbing new front in its battle to overthrow modern civilization.

Castro, Chavez and now Ortega-redux. A scary alliance if ever there was one. Granted, there is terrible poverty in these lands below my nation's borders. Granted, the machinations of the US over the years have done a lot of harm down there. But since when have these populist caudillos ever accomplished anything except to enrich themselves? And now, courting terrorists?

Not good at all.