re: "Earth to President Obama: Our neighbor Mexico is in dire straits"

Pundita ("US foreign policy for the 21st Century") draws your attention to our southern neighbor.

Money quote(s):

"The poorest in Mexico don't have the entitlements safety nets and the local nonprofit aid groups that the developed countries have. So of course when the construction jobs tanked in the United States, Mexicans who earned a living here from the jobs, and whose remittances kept relatives back home from starvation, returned to starvation circumstances -- for themselves and their relatives."

&

"(H)ere is another tip for our new President. This link is to a map of the world. After noting the proximity of the United States to Mexico, would you please kindly instruct your security advisors, your entire Cabinet such as it exists, and the U.S. Department of State to wrench their attention from Europe, Asia and the Middle East long enough to put their full attention on Mexico for 15 minutes?

That's another way of saying that Secretary Clinton's first official trip abroad should have been to Mexico, not Japan.

Wake up. You've been in office less than a month and already you've managed to offend our northern neighbor because of the Buy America nonsense. Whatever you might think of NAFTA, the U.S. has sunk so much into the agreement that by now all of Mexico should look like Orange County. Instead, the situation there is a debacle."