Sunday Late Night: What’s Happening?

We’ve had a couple of really serious discussions today. How about looking at the lighter side of politics for a bit? If you’d like to imbibe some liquid or chemical refreshment, please feel free. I had to quit all that stuff more than a quarter of a century ago myself. Now I’m just high on life! Actually, I’m a complete political junkie and internet addict, in case you hadn’t noticed.

So anyway, our Dear Leader is on another one of his trips, this time to Latin America for the “Summit of the Americas.” The Castro brothers are warming up to Mr. Obama, and Hugo Chavez seems to like him a lot too. Chavez gave Obama a book called Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo Galliano. The book quickly rocketed to second place on Amazon’s bestseller list and is now sold out. According to the BBC:

President Obama looked surprised when Mr Chavez got up from his seat, handed him the book and then shook his hand.

It was a Spanish-language paperback copy inscribed with the message: “For Obama, with affection”.

A little later, Mr Obama had this reaction: “Well I think it was a nice gesture to give me a book. I’m a reader.”

Fox News, in their usual unbiased “we report, you decide” manner, offers an entertaining story from the summit with the headline “Obama Endures Ortega Diatribe.” (H/T, Jangles)

President Obama endured a 50-minute diatribe from socialist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that lashed out at a century of what he called terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America and included a rambling denunciation of the U.S.-imposed isolation of Cuba’s Communist government.

Obama sat mostly unmoved during the speech but at times jotted notes. The speech was part of the opening ceremonies at the fifth Summit of the Americas here.

Actually, the U.S. has subjected Latin America to more than a century of nighmarish aggression, exploitation, and interference with sovereign governments, but I digress. Back to the Fox story:

Ortega denounced the U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s new Communist government in Cuba in 1961, a history of US racism and what he called suffocating U.S. economic policies in the region.

In his 17-minute address to the summit, Obama departed from his prepared remarks to mildly rebuke Ortega.

“To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements. I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old. Too often, an opportunity to build a fresh partnership of the Americas has been undermined by stale debates. We’ve all heard these arguments before.”

Actually, the president misspoke on the sequence of events in Cuba. The invasion of CIA-trained rebels at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba occurred in April 1961. Obama was born August 4, 1961.

As Jangles pointed out in a comment on the previous thread, once again Dear Leader is confused about the timing of public events in relation to his birth. Perhaps if he didn’t have to reflexively make everything about himself, he wouldn’t repeatedly make these kinds of mistakes.

While I was perusing the Fox News website, I came across this hilarious story about Vice President Joe Biden: “Rove Calls Biden ‘Liar’ After VP Boasts of Scolding Bush.” Apparently the gaffe-tastic Mr. Biden told this story on CNN recently.

“I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office,” Biden began, “‘Well, Joe,’ he said, ‘I’m a leader.’ And I said: ‘Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'”

Karl Rove is having none of it.

The exchange is purely “fictional,” said Rove, who was Bush’s top political adviser in the White House.

“It didn’t happen,” Rove, a FOX News contributor and former Bush adviser, told Megyn Kelly in an interview taped for “On The Record.” “It’s his imagination; it’s a made-up, fictional world.

“He ought to get out of it and get back to reality,” Rove added. “He’s making this up out of whole cloth.”

Rove also said few presidents would spend a long time with anybody in the Oval Office, particularly “with all due respect, a blowhard like Joe Biden.”

OK, I can’t stand Karl Rove, but that’s funny. In 2004, Biden told a similar story on Bill Maher’s show.

“When I speak to the president – and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff,” Biden said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” in April 2006. “And the president will say things to me, and I’ll literally turn to the president, say: ‘Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don’t know the facts?’ And he’ll look at me and he’ll say – my word – he’ll look at me and he’ll say: ‘My instincts.’ He said: ‘I have good instincts.’ I said: ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough.'”

Hmmm…I wonder if Biden would have the guts to talk to Dear Leader like that?

So what are you reading/watching/hearing tonight? If anyone is still around, that is.

I keep forgetting that only in Massachusetts is tomorrow a legal holiday. Patriot’s Day. It’s the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord–the beginning of the American Revolution. Nowadays we just have a marathon and an early baseball game.

Concord Minuteman Memorial

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.