It goes without saying that Newt Gingrich is a complete and total idiot. Of course our Presidents frolicked around with Russian and Soviet leaders. Almost as funny today was when the worst spokesperson/analyst/whateveritisthesepeoplearepaidfor ever, Brad Blakeman, tried to trot out that nonsense over at the Politico story DougJ linked to earlier:
The answer is a simple one. The President of the United States should never shake the hand of a brutal dictator from a country we do not have formal diplomatic relations with.
When the moderator pointed out that Nixon shook Mao’s hand, Blakeman’s response was essentially “that was different.” Blakeman then stuck around to get schooled by another member of the “arena.” Good times.
Later on, apparently butthurt, Blakeman thought he had another in:
For all the Arena gladhanders: Was it rude for the US to walk out on the Iranian President’s UN Speech today? What’s the harm in listening?
Of course, poor Brad apparently didn’t read the NY Times piece he linked, or he would have known that the US didn’t walk out on the Iranian President’s speech today, because the US was not attending:
A stream of delegates from France and other European nations walked out of a United Nations conference here on Monday in protest during a speech by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who criticized the formation of a “racist government” in the Middle East in a clear reference to Israel.
***The conference, the first United Nations conference in eight years to address the issue of racism, was already being boycotted by Israel, the United States and several important allies.
That would seem to suggest to me that President Obama does in fact seem to recognize the difference between statecraft and merely being polite. But then again, I’m not a blithering idiot like Newt Gingrich or Brad Blakeman.
r€nato
Indeed, the 1989 Soviet conquest of the USA can be traced directly to the fact that too many presidents – from FDR right down to Ronald Reagan – shook the hands of too many Soviet dictators.
As all scientists now agree, this led to an inevitable sapping of presidential bodily fluids and all that that entails. For instance, Afghani mujahideen lost the will to fight Soviet aggressors after hearing news of Reagan’s handshake with Gorbachev at the December 1987 INF treaty signing.
The Dangerman
Newt Gingrich and Brad Blakeman = Beavis and Butthurt
Zifnab
But, getting up there and saying those things against an oppressive DemonRat strong arming Presidential dictator made Gignrich and Blakeman seem so brave and so serious.
Or something.
Ed Marshall
Is Chavez a brutal dictator, now? Not that that’s ever been a point of protocol ever, but really?
r€nato
Newt Gingrich and Ted Haggard = Beavis and Buttsex
Rainy
I really don’t like when thy trot out Newt Gingrich, like anybody, besides the far right fringies, give a damn about what he has to say. He thinks that Obama should have stopped the threat of piracy entirely after the Captain Phillips thing.
r€nato
@Rainy:
who else have they got? Sarah Palin? Mitch McConnell? Michael Steele? McCain? Romney?
When one of your party’s most respected public figures is Newt Gingrich, you know you’re fucked.
WereBear
Rarely is a fellow so aptly named.
bago
Don’t you people understand! Someone who is not a lecherous white old man is leading the country!
FREAK OUT!
El Cid
George W. Bush Jr. shook Chavez’ hand when Bush Jr. first attended the summit. Chavez mentioned that when he was shaking Obama’s hand. But that was different. Because Bush Jr’s steely gaze kept Chavez from taking over the USA, whereas Obama’s weak surrendering ways lured Hugo Chavez to give New Jersey the 400-acre wildlife refuge Petty Island. If this keeps up, we will be stuck with all sorts of extra valuable property. The word for this is outrage.
smiley
This really contradicts Gingrich, et al. He really is popular, deserving or not, pretty much everywhere.
gbear
OMG! Obama photographed shaking hands and bowing to the President of Mexico’s DOG!! We need some commentary about this from Rick Santorum!
ps: the dog’s a lefty too.
pps: the president should never shake the hand of someone who licks their own butt.
Ash
Where was the OUTRAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!! when Bush looked into Putin’s soul? Isn’t he, you know, a tad bit more threatening than Chavez?
Bill Herbert
The President of the United States should never shake the hand of a brutal dictator from a country we do not have formal diplomatic relations with.
Huh? He thinks we don’t have diplomatic relations with Venezuela?
smiley
@gbear Um, it’s a right, i.e., correct, hand to paw shake. And since we know that people wipe their ass with their non-dominant hand, we can assume that the dog wipes it’s ass with it’s left paw also. Evolution and all, after all.
JenJen
Watching Gingrich spew Chavez Talking Points he clearly wasn’t committed to on The Today Show this morning was painful, it really was. The cooking segment that followed was far more earnest.
Matt Taibbi captures the mood of America, and is so full of win in his response to a pissed-off, tea-drunk commenter on his blog:
eric k
I 2nd Ed’s comment. Chavez has done some autocratic things, but Venezuela should still rank pretty high on the democracy and rule of law scale, as opposed to say a certain middle eastern country whose leaders W did a lot more than smile and shake hands with.
smiley
BTW, I really like the photo of Obama shaking “hands” with Calderon’s dog. The family is obviously proud of their pooch. That’s how you do diplomacy.
Added: is the president wearing basketball shoes in the ninth photo?
DougL
WOLVERINES!
gbear
@smiley: Agreed. It’s a cool picture.
WereBear
Love the pic.
And thank the FSM it’s a Golden Retriever; I can just see Pat Buchanan spluttering about shaking hands with some barky Chihuahua shows how wimpy President Obama is…
kommrade reproductive vigor
Clearly Obama should have looked into Chavez’s eyes and seen his soul.
Comrade Darkness
@Bill Herbert, where was the outrage when the Bushies were coaching the 2002 coup installed president who had just ousted a democratically elected leader in said country? Repubs want to spread democracy, my ass…
valdivia
They pulled their ambassador back in sept because of Bolivia (they had expelled the US Ambassador) i think maybe we recalled ours as well once they pulled theirs. But now after meeting Obama a new Ambassador has been named. Chavez may be a lot of things but he is not stupid–his anti americanism worked when Bush was in office today not so much.
wilfred
You know, we keep saying how important the UN is, and how important it is for us to support its status as an institution. And then we don’t go to the conference:
The Western countries with the longest and bloodiest histories of racism refuse to attend because one of them might be accused of racism.
That’s pretty fucking pathetic, and noted by those who did attend.
PaulW
Don’t be so surprised the Far Right Noise Machine is in another snit… again and again and always again… over something Obama did.
It doesn’t matter what he does, Rush and BillO and Glenn and Malkin and Ann and special guest Newt will jump up and down and accuse Obama of EVVVVVIIILLLLL. What was Obama supposed to do with Chavez, bitchslap him? I bet if he did bitchslap Chavez, FOX Not-News would be screaming that Obama violated international protocol.
It does not matter what Obama does, they will criticize him for it. They seem to think this is 1993, that this is Bill Clinton all over again, and that a majority of Americans still buy their bullsh-t. I’m still waiting for Newt and BillO to scream about the way Obama ties his shoelaces.
El Cid
From the Latin American Herald Tribune.
According to various reports, Chavez proposed directly to Obama renewing formal diplomatic ties & exchanging ambassadors, and since they only reportedly spoke twice, it would seem he did that in their 2nd brief conversation, after which Chavez spoke with Secretary of State Clinton, and now Chavez has asked Venezuela’s representative at the Organization of American States, Roy Chaderton, so serve as U.S. Ambassador.
That’s pretty quick.
What’s kind of funny is that Chavez sees the election of Obama and the political changes in the U.S. as part of the tide that he, Chavez, and Venezuela began a decade ago.
PeakVT
Dean Baker still wins that debate. The moderator should have stopped it there.
barkleyg
Right off the bat, I heard Australia and Canada also BOYCOTTED this conference, not just allies, but MAJOR allies.
No, you are not an idiot. Your logic is 180 degrees different than the buttheads you mentioned.
Keep up the good work!
Kyle
The President of the United States should never shake the hand of a brutal dictator from a country we do not have formal diplomatic relations with.
What the fuck is this, junior high?
Are they afraid Obama will catch Venezuelan cooties and then all the other kids will run away from him at recess?
These rightards need to turn off the stupid and sit the fuck down if they have nothing to offer but the rhetorical equivalent of throwing poop.
Mnemosyne
@wilfred:
Since Ahmadinejad managed to spark a mass walkout at the conference with his very first speech, we were probably better off not going at all rather than walking out in a huff like Britain and France did.
Thankovsky
Brad Blakeman is really a disaster. I’m not sure what demographic the GOP intends to appeal to with him; he always makes an immense fool of himself on MSNBC. Anyone remember his “dear old grandma” fuckup during the campaign, when Obama flew back to Hawaii to visit his dying grandmother? Classy motherfucker.
His logic is especially retarded in this case, and I’m extremely glad (not to mention pleasantly surprised!) that the Politico mod pointed out that Nixon, a Republican President, seemed to have no trouble shaking hands with one of the two biggest mass murderers in history, when we had no formal diplomatic relations with him.
The analogy between Nixon opening the door to China, and Obama potentially opening the door to Iran, needs to be hammered repeatedly by Obama’s supporters, because it really hits the crux of the issue: the current strategy is not pragmatic. Opening the door to Tehran IS pragmatic. It’s what a realist would do. It’s what Kissinger would do. So the Republicans REALLY should have no problem with it.
Unless, of course, they’re in the pocket of the Likud Lobby. But that’s just silly.
omen
if the daniel ortega diatribe was so offensive, why hasn’t a clip of it been shown on tv?
if obama did make a show of objecting and walked out on the speech, that would only have alleviated ortega’s standing and made him more popular.
the shortsightedness coming from the right is stunning. it’s they who are naive.
Comrade Dread
Yeah, kind of. He’s definitely a dictator. I suppose you could argue the brutal part because he hasn’t racked up a huge body count yet to my knowledge. But he has engaged in shutting down the opposition and taking private property.
Of course, the United States has no shortage of examples of brutal dictators that we’ve dealt with, befriended, given money to, etc.
Some brutal dictators are more equal than others.
omen
oops, elevated, not alleviated.
omen
@Comrade Dread:
chavez may have autocratic tendencies, but “dictators,” by definition, do not win elections by which carter and other election monitoring groups have certified as fair and legitimate.
gwangung
And this is different from US politicians, how? (Kelo, anyone?)
Comrade Dread
As a detached observer, I would say, it’s a matter of degree.
As a certified cynic, I would say, it’s more like this:
If you’re an American or loyal to America, you’re the pro-democracy leader of your nation who may do bad things and imprison millions, but you only do it to defend freedom.
If you’re not either of those, you are a brutal authoritarian dictator who represses his people and presides over a police state.
liberal
@eric k:
If he’s not tripping over himself to shovel money into the pockets of the local elite, then he’s no better than Chairman Mao.
liberal
@Comrade Dread:
Whether the private property part is bad depends on the property.
If it’s oil and gas fields, more power to him. Those should never have been privatized to begin with.
If it’s the actual fruit of someone’s labor—actual capital, not mineral wealth—that’s a different matter.
anonymous
@gwangung:
The problem with Kelo wasn’t the so-called “taking”. It was that it was a taking for a non-public purpose (viz, enriching the well-connected).
The solution is to institute land value taxation.
Thankovsky
@Thankovsky:
Yikes – replace “Iran” with “Venezuela” and “Tehran” with “Caracas” in this post. Evidently I was tired last night when I wrote that. Although it DOES apply pretty darn well for our policy towards both countries.