In Brief: Ummm, How Is This a Bad Thing?:
So U.S. President Barack Obama shook hands with Venezuelan President (and Sausage) Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas. And Republicans have gotten the vapors over it.
On the CNN, Senator John Ensign opined, "When you're talking about the prestige of the United States and the presidency of the United States, you have to be careful who you're seeing joking around with. And I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen kind of laughing and joking with Hugo Chavez. This is -- you know, this is a person along the lines with Fidel Castro and the types of dictatorship that he has down there in Venezuela and the anti-Americanism that he has been spreading around the world is not somebody the president of the United States should be seen as having, you know, kind of friendly relations with."
The line-up has been numbingly expected. Newt Gingrich, Dana Perino, Bill Bennett, all outraged, outraged, that Obama's DNA mixed for a brief moment with Chavez's.
Sean Hannity waxed incoherently on Friday, "[H]ere it is, Barack Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez. And we remember, what, two years ago, you know, this is the same guy going to the United Nations calling the United States evil, how President Bush had spoken the day before and the stench and the sulphur smell still stood there, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm looking at Barack Obama, and there's a lot he obviously doesn't like about this country, he doesn't seem to like our economic system, our superpower status, doesn't seem to like our history, doesn't seem to like our underlying law."
Okay. So, like, if Obama was caught giving Chavez a hand job under the conference table, if Obama had been seen in the cloak room having seven minutes in heaven with Chavez, if Obama had been getting a reacharound while Chavez was giving him a Venezuelan pipeline treatment in his ass, we might, and that's "might," have something to talk about.
But allowing Hugo Chavez to have a photo opp that he can hang in his office back in Caracas? That he can hand out as souvenirs? How, in any fucking way, shape, or form, does that weaken us? We no longer live in the era of thuggish arrogance from America. Don't they understand that?
They really have nothing to talk about. The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll keep saying. Every word that comes out of their mouths now stinks of such rank hypocrisy that they may as well be brushing their teeth with bullshit.