Halperin’s fronting the absurd Chavez handshake story. The Politico has convened their asinine Arena panel to discuss it. And Newt is leading the charge on this. James Wolcott said it best:
Only within the Beltway popcorn popper could Gingrich, whose serpent tongue and ogre ego did so much to polarize discourse in the 1990s and abort reform, be considered a foxy catch. Only in Washington, D.C., could Gingrich, a magpie of futurist jargon and a bumptious opportunist, pass himself off as an iconoclastic force and centrifuge of ideas, a cross between Buckminster Fuller and Che Guevara leading a commando raid on the buffet table.
It’s a good thing there was no real news over the past week.
Adolphus
Favorite quote from the Arena:
Lee from NC
I generally try to ignore politics over the weekend (sanity reasons) but somehow was peripherally aware of this nonevent even so. My question is, why is this an issue? I mean, I know we aren’t supposed to like Chavez or something, but are we so childish and petty that we don’t even shake the hands of people we don’t like?
DougJ
Yes.
Matt
I liked this one:
schrodinger's cat
This is beyond stupid. What was Obama supposed to do? Punch Chavez? I have seen photos of their saint Reagan laughing and shaking hands with the Soviet leaders, was he being weak? When did being rude become equivalent to being tough? Was the national media always so bad, what have we done to deserve the likes of Halperin and Politico?
NonyNony
@schrodinger’s cat:
As I said elsewhere when someone brought up the famous picture of Richard Nixon shaking hands with Chairman Mao – IOKIYAR. That’s all.
Bush could have gone up and given Chavez a backrub and the press would have fawned over what a powerful moment it was for American diplomacy. Obama shakes Chavez’s hand and he’s weak hippy socia-list Communist leftist President undermining America with his deadly good manners.
Punchy
This makes no sense. Nothing is made or mixed in a centrifuge. Perhaps he should have said “placenta of ideas, easily missing each month and therefore being disengaged and bloodied regularly”.
El Cid
George W. Bush shook Hugo Chavez’ hand when he first visited the Summit.
In fact, Hugo Chavez himself mentioned that to Obama in front of the god-damned reporters — ‘With this same hand I shook President Bush’s hands 8 years ago’.
God these people are such f*@%ing useless god-damned tools.
Napoleon
@Lee from NC:
I am convinced that the average person in the political and media “elite” in Washington has the maturity of the average sophomore in high school. I have more respect for the maturity of the guys who do my lawn or the woman at the seafood counter at the grocery store then I do them.
MikeJ
If Obama had ripped out Chavez’s spine and eaten his liver they would have complained Obama was too easy on him. Fuck Politico.
Wag
I hate to admit it, but Grover Norquist at the above link to Politico did a great job of putting this entire “controversy” into reasonable perspective, and shot down every right wing talking point about how this terrible the handshake will embolden America’s enemies.
I can’t believe that I just typed this, but its true.
Alan
OT: FoxNews.com Serving Up Infected Ads?
If you’re using a PC I wouldn’t visit Foxnews.com until they clean up their site.
** Atanarjuat **
Of course President Obama should have shaken President Hugo Chávez’s hand. What Obama failed to do, however, is to demonstrate America’s “fuck yeah!” might and right by squeezing Chávez’s hand hard enough to pop cartilage and crack bones.
Presidente Newt wouldn’t have hesitated to apply the Freedom Grip(tm). Obama’s a wimp, as David Broder, the final arbiter of Presidential Manliness, has soberly pointed out.
-A
aimai
Man, that’s the best parody atanarjuat I’ve ever seen. Where can I get a Freedom Grip ™?
aimai
AkaDad
If Sarah Palin were President and Chavez gave her a book, she’d take it home and burn it.
That’s what real Americans do.
SenyorDave
I personally think that Obama should have spit in his hand prior to shaking Chavez’ hand. Then he could have had a translator tell Chavez what he had done. Can you imagine how powerful America would have looked?
I heard that at the G20 summit he had the Secret Service put a a bag of flaming dog crap in front of Sarkozy’s hotel room door. Take that, France!
Violet
I saw Newt on the Today Show this morning, and he didn’t even seem like he was trying. He made some comment about Obama bowing to the Saudi prince, then said something about shaking Chavez’s hand. He followed that with, “We do buy a lot of oil from Chavez,” and then sort of realized that, oops, maybe we do need to suck up to Chavez and Venezuela, since we gotta have that oil. It was kind of funny.
Newt is total scum. I can’t figure out what anyone finds attractive about him at all. Beltway types or otherwise. He’s terrible to women. He ran the Republican train off the tracks. He’s consistently wrong. I guess in political-land that gets you plumb speaking gigs and a role as lauded leader. Weird.
Cat Lady
That’s insulting to high school sophomores. Really. They’re more like five year old boys who have all just discovered their weenies feel good.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@aimai:
Home Depot, aisle 11.
geg6
Newt, and I know this is simply repeating a known fact and all, is fucking idiot. He was on the Today Show talking about this today (of course, with no one with a different point of view to point out how stupid he is). And when either Matt or Meredith ( I don’t remember which was doing the interview) asked what Obama was supposed to do, rudely ignore him or yell at him or what, Newt said, well, he had to shake his hand but he shouldn’t have smiled. He should have given him stern looks and such to show how much Merkins hate evil dictators like Chavez.
Yeah. Stern looks would put the fear of gawd into that godless commie, all right.
Violet
@geg6:
I think it was Meredith. She was kind of calling him on his BS, which was kind of funny to watch. That comment was priceless. Yeah, shake his hand, but don’t smile! Who knew that international relations hung on whether or not our President smiled. Maybe that was the big problem in Iraq. Bush shouldn’t have smiled!
Honestly, I didn’t think he was even trying. His Republican Talking Points program seemed to have a bug.
Tropical Fats
IOKIYAR. Bush shook his hand so he could intimidate him with his vice-like grip. Obama did it because he wanted to kneel and kiss his ring, but lacked the robust manly physical strength to pull the man’s hand to his lips. Because he has ladyparts.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
John Ensign was on a clip they played on CSPAN saying that Obama was kissing up to a dictator who is guilty of all kinds of human rights abuses and whatnot.
First, I guess kissing up to China is fine because their corporate benefactors profit from it? Second, what about our human rights abuses in regards to detainee interrogations?
Fuck, the wingnuts ain’t even trying any more.
joe from Lowell
Though petty and pointless in isolation, this little flare-up is a continuation of the “without preconditions” debate that took place during the election. There really is a substantive difference of opinion behind this controversy.
Barack Obama is confident in his ability to “win” in the diplomatic arena. He thinks he can take Hugo Chavez and the like in a fair fight. He’s confident he can walk into a situation where he hasn’t yet acceded to anything a foreign leader wants, and that foreign leader hasn’t yet acceded to anything we want, and after negotiations, emerge with an outcome that is good for the United States. He’s like Reagan and Kennedy in that confidence.
Republicans are not. Their yammering about diplomacy being, by its very nature, an exercise in surrender and appeasement isn’t a pose. They really believe this. If you look at the actual negotiations the Bushies undertook – North Korea, India – they operated as if they were losing a war and trying to get the best terms of surrender they could secure.
When Barack Obama acts as if he’s open to free-ranging, open dialogue, they naturally think he’s going to appease and surrender to his interlocutor, because that is what it means to them to engage in open negotiation.
El Cid
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): CHINA DOES NOT COUNT AS AN ENEMY TOTALITARIAN LEFTIST DICTATORSHIP BECAUSE THEY PRODUCE MOST OF WAL-MART’S GOODS SO THEY ARE OBVIOUSLY A PRO-AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. AND SHUT UP.
Cat Lady
All Obama is doing is following the map he gave us in his inauguration speech. Why the wingnuts get themselves worked up about this, when we’ve known all along where we’re going, is just more evidence of their cluelessness and inability to follow along. As if more evidence were needed.
Paul L.
I expect his defenders to say I should not belittle his appearance.
However they will continue to do the same to Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Jonah Goldberg
Krista
Evidently this is how Halperin thinks a Real American(tm) should be acting towards Chavez.
YellowJournalism
It’s funny to watch US news, then watch Canadian news. Up here, the Chavez moment is rarely mentioned, and mentioned only as part of the positive comments regarding Obama’s success as a diplomat. I think Stephen Harper wanted to kiss him or something.
Zifnab
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
I’m sure Obama will take shit the next time he’s filmed shaking hands with the Chinese Premier. For, you know, something. After all, only Nixon is allowed to go to China.
THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB IS YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!
sgwhiteinfla
They are now transitioning to the new meme that President Obama should have interrupted Ortega in his 50 minute diatribe against America. Joe Scarborough with a straight face said that Obama wouldn’t have had to shout him down, just calmly politely disagree. The best response ever was what I saw on twitter from pourmecoffee>/a> who is hilarious by the way.
DougJ
You left out Ross Douthat.
PeakVT
@Wag:
Norquist makes sense until the end of last paragraph, where he gets concerned about the manly-man-ness of leaders hugging and kissing, which is like the VAT. Or something. (I think he was trying to be funny but only managed to prove that he is one-issue crank.)
Zifnab
@DougJ: Not to mention Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. :-p
geg6
@Violet:
That was literally the stupidest I’ve ever seen Newt come across on tv. Now, don’t get me wrong, Newt is full ‘o stupid. But he usually sounds reasonable and halfway sorta not completely brainless when he’s making shit up on tv. Today? Stern looks? Seriously? I laughed out loud when he said it. And I rarely do that alone in my apartment for fear someone in the building might hear me and think I’m nuts.
kay
@joe from Lowell:
Republicans are not. Their yammering about diplomacy being, by its very nature, an exercise in surrender and appeasement isn’t a pose. They really believe this. If you look at the actual negotiations the Bushies undertook – North Korea, India – they operated as if they were losing a war and trying to get the best terms of surrender they could secure.
I agree completely. I watched Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough try to explain their position and they had so much trouble. They were sputtering. They can’t even articulate it. The people on the other side of the table looked bewildered by the outrage. The two conservatives may as well have been speaking Greek.
I think it’s real. They can’t control Obama, they can’t control the dialogue, and they’re really terrified.
I personally think they need hand-holding and comfort during this difficult transition period. Difficult for them, I mean.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@El Cid & Zifnab:
Thanks for clearing up the confusion, the “right” side of my brain must not be functioning.
That’s good. ;)
Max
If, after just 3 months, the GOP is so marginalized that is forced to criticize a handshake, I can only imagine how ridiculous this is going to be for the remaining 93 months in Obama’s term(s).
April 2015 – the headline reads…. “GOP says that Obama double knots when he ties his shoes, proves that he’s not willing to take the risks necessary to lead this country”
Zifnab
You know what would have showed Hugo Chavez a thing or two? Bombing Iran. Followed by tax cuts.
rock
We all know the manly thing have been to tell Cavez to “Go fuck yourself”. You know, WWDD.
And I honestly believe, if a rep president did that we would have several swooning paeans written about his steely-eyed resolve and no-nonsense approach.
To say that most major media figures in this country are like children is insulting to children. They are vapid game-players who are insulated from the pain the world delivers to most the people living in it.
I read this and I felt like crying. And these jackasses waste time talking about a handshake.
sgwhiteinfla
Well I should say that was the best response…..other than the one the President himself gave.
Obama returned to Washington early Sunday evening. But even before he got back, Obama was facing condemnation from some Republicans about how he dealt with Chavez. “I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen kind of laughing and joking with Hugo Chavez,” said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.
The president brushed that aside, noting that Venezuela has a defense budget about one-six hundredth the size of the United States’ and owns the oil company Citgo.
“It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States,” Obama said.
Jay C
@Violet:
Fixed.
Though you had it at your first sentence.
Krista
Petulant, much? I’m glad that question was asked, because to me, it sounds like it just pointed out how incredibly childish and petty Newt is being. (Mind you, what else is new, right?)
I swear, I’m becoming more and more convinced that Peter Griffin was modeled after much of the right-wing punditocracy.
gbear
@Wag:
Did your fingers burst into flames?
Here’s a quick STFU for the wingnuts: the video of Don Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.
Oh, and another video. I’ve never seen a cat look so defeated. Poor kitty.
Comrade Darkness
@gbear, up, beat me to it.
Frankly, if U.S. leaders are allowed to shake hands with Chinese leaders they aught to be able to tongue kiss Castro.
joe from Lowell
I would like to see David Axelrod more explicitly link the criticism the Republicans are making here with the “anti-appeasement/we don’t talk to evil” line they used to help make the Iraq War happen.
Violet
@geg6:
Yeah, me too. It’s almost worth finding the clip and seeing if it can go viral. It’s at that level of stupid. Which for Newt, is really saying something.
@Jay C:
Lolz. I was trying to be charitable. And I’ve seen people on both sides be stupid. Although today’s GOP is certainly the most popcorn-worthy.
Phoenix Woman
You can tell Newt has 2012 aspirations because he’s attacking Sarah Palin: http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2009/04/20/newt-gingrich-nailin-sarah-palins-political-coffin-shut/
Woody
The most important question to me is whether or not the Obamanistas have abandonned the previous regime’s policy of fomenting civil war in Bolivia between Morales and the indigenes, versus the white, wealthy Euro-Bolivians in the hinterlands…
Andrew
At least it wasn’t a terrorist fist jab.
Church Lady
James Wolcott looks like a bigger drunk than Christopher Hitchens. He looks in need of some hair of the dog in that screen shot.
omen
also disturbing was the credence lent to dick armey. harold ford couldn’t kowtow enough to the guy. dick helped enable the enron debacle. that wasn’t wreckage enough? when are we going to make these guys eat crow?
El Cid
@Woody: Evo Morales isn’t waiting around to be told 2nd hand.
They caught a set of international assassin terrorists planning to kill Morales, the VP, and Santa Cruz authorities and who had apparently been responsible for the earlier dynamite attacks. The suspects, 3 of whom were shot in a firefight at the Hotel Las Americas, included Bolivians, a Hungarian extreme rightist / occasional Islamicist / occasional actor, a Croat former officer, a Romanian, an Irishman, and others.
Morales is blaming the U.S Embassy. And although I don’t know anything about the accusations, that’s always a good primary suspect to include in investigations of assassination plots against leftist leaders, unless you want to wait 30 or 40 years until the obvious and contemporaneously denied is declassified and thereafter ignored as old news.
omen
@Woody:
what evidence do you have to suggest obama is gunning for morales?
Don
Sounds like you’ve got it figured out to me.
Sometimes it feels like these clowns are working for the Daily Show. There’s 2 minutes for tonight done: clips of the various bozos bitching about the handshake, then clips of their (R) heroes doing the same thing, then bonus points for clips of them talking about what great things it says about the Republican for doing the same thing.
omen
@El Cid:
reading the guardian piece, obama did what morales asked him to do. obama repudiated any attempts of undemocratic and violent regime change at the summit of the americas press conference he held.
ridiculous to even suggest obama would back such a thing. he was one of the first to call for more democracy in pakistan, that the people should decide who should rule for them, not a dictator.
GregB Formerly GSD
Shorter Newt:
Obama should have looked like he could smell shit but couldn’t see it.
Our leading light of the rightwing intelligentsia in action.
-G
Brick Oven Bill
I have worked with contractors and educated persons. The two most successful people I have met, in terms of money, did not go to college. These two persons started out as cops, and then something happened to them, so that they had to leave their policeman careers, and then went into business themselves. These guys are now rich.
The reason, in my opinion, for their success is that interactions with people as a policeman teaches a person about human nature. In contrast, people learning about people at modern colleges are taught to deny human nature. Understanding people is critical to being successful as a contractor, it would appear.
Body language is a very good indicator of intent. The eyes are also very important. These cops learned to stare people down. One of the things that bothers me about the teleprompters is that the President is looking at a television screen, instead of his audience, making it difficult to read his eyes.
omen
did you see the 60 minutes piece on bolivia? the country is pushing back and spurning a lot of foreign companies interest in their lithium resource.
o kanis
China, Venezuela and France’s Total (TOT) are in advanced negotiations on a complex three-way multibillion-dollar oil production and refining venture, sources close to the negotiations said Tuesday.
Senior officials from state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, China National Petroleum Corp. and Total are to meet in Caracas in May to discuss a 20-year pact to send up to 200,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan oil to China, possibly starting in 2013, with volumes rising after that.
http://tinyurl.com/ccmfwx
BEIJING, April 8 (Xinhua) — China and Venezuela agreed here Wednesday to step up cooperation in fields such as energy, agriculture, and high technology and take joint actions in the face of the global financial crisis.
http://tinyurl.com/c4cqul
That idiot, Obama, could have made wingers and Newt the genius happy by snubbing Chavez. But noooo, he chose to look at the big picture. The one that leaves China making deals all over Latin America. The chump.
El Cid
@omen: I’d like to emphasize once again that I made no suggestion whatsoever that Obama had in any way backed assassination attempts against Evo Morales.
However, Obama or not, Bolivian authorities would be utter fools not to include the U.S. Embassy in its scope of investigations, since Bolivia sees a country, “The United States”, and not just “Bush” or “Obama”, whose Embassy just several months ago was facilitating dangerous separatist riots by wealthier Bolivian provinces until the concerted action of neighboring South American states got the U.S. to cut that out.
FWIW, Bolivian authorities are saying only that they have not yet gotten to the root of finding who organized and funded this particular terrorist group, its previous attacks, and its plans, only that so far funding sources had led to various industrial leaders (without naming any).
I would be very surprised to see U.S. involvement in this. I think it stems from local elites seeking to take out Morales and decapitate his social movement. Yet in no way could I for one moment advise the leader of any Latin or Caribbean nation against doing due diligence to protect themselves from rather common patterns of U.S. intervention.
Always bear in mind that while we see things changing from day to night and back between different presidents, our nation has rather brutally intervened in their politics and government under many different presidents.
Morales trusted Obama enough to confront Obama directly and ask him if the U.S. was conspiring against him. I don’t think a smart leader like Morales would have done that if he really were convinced of it.
Meanwhile, I’m sure on the right plenty either have written or will be writing about how the U.S. should take Morales out.
Rainy
The only people complaining about this are people on the right who have never had a diplomatic mission in their lives.
Balconesfault
@Brick Oven Bill:
There is no shortage of footage where Obama is answering questions – either one-on-one with interviewers, or in press conferences, where he’s not using a teleprompter.
Read away!
omen
@El Cid:
you and the guardian mischaracterize the morales finger pointing. from the article:
If the US president did not repudiate the alleged conspiracy, “I might think it was organized through the [US] embassy”, said Morales.
but obama did repudiate the plot. an irishman, hungarian and romanian were involved but blame is being cast at the us embassy without even a hint of evidence.
Mike in NC
The take-away from this latest gaffe/scandal is that Obama needs to show up at the next summit of world leaders and act like Robert Stack did in “Airplane” when the Hare Krishnas came at him in the terminal.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
Shorter BOB:
1. Body language
2. ???
3. Profit!
LD50
I suppose this is BoB’s way of letting us know (a) he’s never been to college and (b) he plans to vote for Palin in 2012.
Ash Can
@joe from Lowell: Your comment set me to thinking, and I realize that of course the Republicans think diplomacy doesn’t work. They’re lousy at it themselves — all they know how to do is bluster, swagger and threaten — and they project that onto those who do want to undertake diplomacy. They’re either not bright enough to realize that a different skill set (one that’s incomprehensible to them) can be successful, or not honest enough to admit it. Or both.
Balconesfault
But Palin went to – what – 4 or 5 different colleges?
Doesn’t that mean she’s learned to deny human nature to the 5th power?
Explains her still championing “abstinence only” when both she and her daughter had pre-wedlock pregnancies…
Cyrus
@Violet:
The media’s love affair with tools like Newt would be solid evidence of a liberal bias, giving a forum to only the most buffoonish and assholeish possible spokespeople for the other side, if those tools like Newt were not the chosen mouthpieces for the other side as well.
El Cid
@omen: Okay, enough. What the FUCK are you talking about? Are you even god-damned reading what I have fucking written or are you debating birds in your head? I did not god-damned say that Evo Morales blamed Obama. Morales says that the U.S. is still meddling in Bolivian affairs and challenged Obama to repudiate these attempts at violence against his government which Obama did.
Now don’t fucking suggest one more god-damn time that I was blaming Obama for this shit. Read what I god-damn wrote, maybe twice if you need. I have no idea how many times you need to read this to not see it too as accusing Obama. Hint: it’s not.
*******************************
The U.S. president went out of his way at a news conference capping a 34-nation hemispheric summit to respond to Evo Morales’ plea.
“Specifically on the Bolivia issue,” said Obama, “I just want to make absolutely clear that I am absolutely opposed and condemn any efforts at violent overthrows of democratically elected governments, wherever it happens in the hemisphere.”
Morales told reporters Saturday that Washington continued to conspire against him, deeming hollow Obama’s pledge of a new era of mutual respect between the U.S. and Latin America, with no senior partner.
He said he had asked Obama during a private meeting with South American leaders to publicly repudiate an alleged assassination plot that Bolivian authorities said they crushed on Thursday. Bolivian police killed three alleged conspirators: an Irishman, a Romanian and a Bolivian-Croat.
Morales said he found it difficult to believe that the purported plot wasn’t financed by a foreign source, but he did not allege U.S. involvement.
His vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, on Sunday said Bolivia had “not encountered any cooperation with the CIA, the DEA or NAS (Narcotics Affairs Section)” — the three U.S. agencies that Morales’ government has accused of meddling.
Morales on Saturday said that if Obama didn’t repudiate the alleged assassination plot, “I might think it was organized through the embassy.”
Woody
Omen:
I don’t have any evidence, except for the that posted in the piece directly above yours.
What is wanted is evidence that the Obamanistas ARE NOT going after Morales, and that is in very short supply…
tomjones
When Republicans ask themselves again in a few weeks, “Why are we out of power?” someone helpfully point them to this episode.
omen
why does this remind me of the wmd in iraq argument?
omen
@Brick Oven Bill:
and this is born out of first hand experience, i’m sure.
TheFountainHead
I wonder how they had Presidents in the days of radio. That must have been some tough-going.
Woody
omen:
forgive me for being dense, but i don’t see any similarity at all.
There were never any WMD in Iraq, and thus there was no evidence of them in contry.
there has been plenty of evidence that, under Bush, at least, there were numerous efforts to destabilize Bolivia and to overthrow Morales. Obama’s smooth ‘denial, is not convincing. Why should it be? He can lie with the best of em and that’s already part of the record…
No Government in this hemisphere can afford to exclude USer interference from its calculations when there are efforts to attack or overthrow eletced democracies if the winner is not the hand-picked USer candidate…
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat:
That would’ve been awesome:
“*Whapow!* Lights out fucker!”
Nobama don’t play that shit!
LD50
Indeed. But I was referring to the “book larnin and intelligence is grossly overrated” argument I heard from several people in defense of Palin last fall. (Appallingly, often from people who were highly educated, and in total sincerity.) But I guess hearing this argument from BoB proves that dumbshits can believe this, too.
anonevent
@tomjones: I agree, but that’s because the logic of your sentence is equivalent to “When I see a unicorn, I’ll ask it what its horn is for.”
is a pretty powerful assumption.
Cat Lady
@Brick Oven Bill:
BOB, just give up the teleprompter thing. Even Mikey “Tire Swing” Scherer has found a nut:
Scherer is a hack, but he sounds gob smacked.
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/04/19/the-obama-foreign-policy-doctrine/
Napoleon
@TheFountainHead:
Or the town crier. That must be how misfits like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Jackson and Lincoln became presidents.
TheFountainHead
@Napoleon: Yeah, I mean, electing a black dude is one thing, but a guy with wooden teeth?!?
omen
@Woody:
exactly. lack of evidence didn’t stop bush from claiming iraq had them. just like the lack of evidence pointing to obama doesn’t stop you from believing him guilty of something.
Corner Stone
@omen: It seems pretty clear that the two hemispheres of your brain are not connected. No one is arguing the things you keep asserting.
omen
corner, what am i asserting?
Corner Stone
@omen:
That sounds like an assertion.
omen
chill, el cid, i hadn’t seen 61 when i posted at 64.
though i do quibble with this statement:
Morales is blaming the U.S Embassy. And although I don’t know anything about the accusations, that’s always a good primary suspect to include in investigations of assassination plots against leftist leaders,
it’s always good to suspect the US without evidence?
kay
Of course, there’s a lot of pictures of Republican Presidents smiling and chatting with dictators. I mean, you knew they existed and you knew they were coming out.
Newt Gingrich and Crew are not going to fare well in the internet age. It isn’t 1994. They don’t have two weeks to establish the lies, they have, tops, 4 hours.
The truth catches up quicker than it used to.
Dennis-SGMM
It’s odd to me that the only thing that makes Chavez so worthy of attention is the fact that his country has oil. There was no discussion of the sort of handshake Obama gave to any of the other leaders present. A person would almost think that oil distorts our foreign policy.
omen
@Corner Stone:
you are right, corner, i’m an idiot.
Cris
Remember that these are the same guys who said Obama is an empty suit, full of pretty rhetoric and nothing to back it up. Once again, they believed their own bullshit. They didn’t expect him to follow through on anything.
Cat Lady
@Cris:
That’s right. It’s called projection.
Comrade Jake
Arguably the best part of Newt’s appearance this morning on GMA was when he said that this sort of thing is indicative of Obama’s “shallow” foreign policy.
You know, as opposed to shallow political commentary. The sense of irony was lost on Newt, apparently.
toujoursdan
I take Obama and Chavez and raise it by a Nixon and Mao:
http://www.state.gov/cms_images/maonixon.jpg
I don’t get it. Presidents shake the hands of people they don’t like all the time.
kay
@toujoursdan:
Hah! The pictures appear. I knew it.
JK
Mark Halperin is playing in the same sandbox as Matt Sludge, I mean Drudge.
Unfortunately, an undeserved level of respectability has been conferred on Halperin and he gets to shovel his BS on shows like Morning Joe, AC360, and Charlie Rose.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@toujoursdan:
Not black/Islamic presidents, nossir, they certainly don’t/shouldn’t.
Cris
Bolivia’s lithium — and the growing foreign interest in exploiting it — is one big reason Morales needs to sleep with one eye open.
I’m glad Obama gave Morales his assurance that the administration was not involved in the plot But even if Evo is confident the President is telling the truth, why shouldn’t he consider that there might be elements within the US government acting without Obama’s consent?
El Cid
@omen: Given the precedents, and if you’re not aware of them you’ve no interest in discussing this subject at all, yes, even if there’s no evidence, any leftist or nationalist leader in Latin America should maintain constant vigilance on the activities of the U.S. Embassy, so as to prevent the standard levels of subversion and international crime with which the U.S. so frequently conducts its foreign policy.
I don’t care whether or not that ‘sounds’ to someone like it’s presumptive. It isn’t. Yes. I’d do it too. And it wouldn’t be paranoid or unjustified, it’d be like how cops often round up a set of usual suspects to chat with on unsolved crimes. It would have been better had generations of U.S. leaders not convinced themselves that ‘our’ national interests were served by such criminal and murderous and subversive operations, but this is a fact of life we have to deal with.
jill
What Newt doesn’t want to admit is that Bush made Chavez and Obama instantly made him irrelevant. Chavez thrives on confrontation. Of course they know that, but what else can do they but talk about imaginary bogeymen.
Zuzu's Petals
@Balconesfault:
Yeah, I guess he was wearing shades during all those campaign townhall meetings.
El Cid
@jill: I think it’s a lot more complex than that. Chavez really is an odd dude, but he really is drawn to the United States as a society. I think he’s really been thrown off balance by Obama, because he still feels what he feels about the American Empire (as he calls it), yet he so badly seems to want to also see Obama as a huge change for this country. It’s really odd to watch. Chavez clearly admires Obama, and yet simultaneously cannot dissociate him from how he has experienced or analyzed U.S. power.
I think maybe the most telling thing about the increasingly odder Daniel Ortega’s 50 minute recounting of U.S. attacks on Nicaragua is how several times he made clear that Obama was not implicated in his complaints.
There are a lot of leaders in Latin America who really do have a love / hate relationship with the U.S. and its leadership.
Origuy
Has Obama replaced the Ambassador to Bolivia yet? (Rhetorical question. Morales expelled Bush’s appointee last year.) Has he replaced the military attache? Has the CIA replaced the station chief? There could be things going on in the embassy that he knows nothing about and would greatly disapprove of. It’s certainly happened before.
Regardless of Morales’ feelings about Obama himself, he has to be suspicious of any US government official, especially those left over from the Bush administration.
omen
@El Cid:
yes, even if there’s no evidence, any leftist or nationalist leader in Latin America should maintain constant vigilance on the activities of the U.S. Embassy,
latin america is rife with their own homegrown rightwing factions willing to get their hands dirty. many of whom we trained at the school of americas.
WereBear
Heck no! They can just suck it up and take it like a man!
(Sexual innuendo optional.)
bago
4chan was there.
TenguPhule
Unfortunately our history in the region tends to make us Suspect #1 ahead of even local rival political parties.
We can thank the fucking CIA and the fucking wankers who thought regime change on a monthly basis was a fucking good idea.
Brachiator
I just can’t get exercised over this if it does not involve a terrorist fist bump.
Corner Stone
@TenguPhule: Ok, ok so here goes – an irishman, hungarian and romanian walk into a bar in a South American country, right?
It’s a work in progress.
LD50
OMG!!!! AND HE’S EVEN SMILING! OH NOES!!!!11111!!!
Oh, right. He was a Republican. Never mind.
omen
@TenguPhule:
Unfortunately our history in the region tends to make us Suspect #1 ahead of even local rival political parties. We can thank the fucking CIA and the fucking wankers who thought regime change on a monthly basis was a fucking good idea.
yeah, we have a long history of being bastards.
but to casually throwing around accusations that obama was responsible for a plot to kill morales or to accuse him of fomenting civil war without one shred of evidence, is just plain cuckoo.
El Cid
@omen: Yes, it’s even odd to me that any U.S.-sponsored covert activity would even need to be operated out of the U.S. embassy anymore, what with cellphones and satellite phones and email and the web.
Nevertheless, it was lost on no one that the last round of national sovereignty-threatening breakaway regional riots in Bolivia found a number of autonomous region leaders regularly meeting in the U.S. Embassy. I have no earthly idea whether they were simply making an open statement that the U.S. was looking out for the interests of the autonomous movements (which would at least be something reasoned) or if they just didn’t care who saw what.
It’s hard to tell, since this was the George W. Bush Jr. era, so being stupid and arrogant was a hallmark of that regime’s policymaking.