I thought I’d spell John in his role as a Glennzilla troller, but, while no GG fanboi, me, I can’t find anything amiss with this statement:
140 characters (+/-) of truth.
Then there’s this:
I know. Calling out Republican hypocrisy is akin to blaring Dog Bites Man above the fold, but still — I remain almost impressed by how thoroughly President Obama’s critics are so damn good at being utterly blind to the contradictions.
I’d say we should just point and laugh, but these feral children have real power. Feh.
chopper
you clearly don’t understand GG’s argument. it isn’t about the republicans.
Adam
Not sure why GITMO atrocious justify what the Cuban government does every day to dissidents. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Belafon
I’m assuming you meant “spoil” instead of “spell”.
beltane
Dog bites man or dog rapes manhttp://wonkette.com/569651/do-not-click-on-this-story-about-rumored-cia-detainee-rape-by-dogs-really-dont . Maybe the Republicans despise Cuba for failing to live up to American standards of sadism and sexual deviancy.
Belafon
@Adam: The point – hopefully – is that you really can’t use Cuba’s government’s rights abuses as a reason to block improving relations since we’re not exactly awesome at it, especially in Cuba.
Tom Levenson
@chopper: Oh, I know. My point is. And in this case so is GG’s up to some limit: he knows as well as this blog does that this action’s major criticisms are coming predominantly from Republicans, and are being framed explicitly as part of the meta narrative of Obama’s and the Democrats’ alleged foreign policy weakness. So forgive me if I use the (true) statement GG makes to advance a slightly different argument of my own. Or not. Up to you.
Belafon
@beltane: I’m not going to click on that link at work, but the title sounds like the rumor that Kim Jong-Un had his dogs kill his uncle.
LAC
Jaysus… Do we really need the weighing in from the Chinless one?
Alex S.
Slightly off-topic, but I wonder whether there was pressure not to show ‘The Interview’ or ‘Team America’ from the US government, possibly because there are similar secret negotiations taking place with North Kroea.
beltane
@Belafon: It could be similar to that. Although it is kind of awful that the USA has placed itself in the kind of position where, as with North Korea, any such story will gain immediate credibility because what has already been proven true in the past is so terrible.
Marc
@Tom Levenson:
Glenn’s point being of course that one should never forget how evil Obama is, no matter what he does. It’s extremely important to give him credit for nothing.
Cacti
The precedent for Obama’s move was set in 1972 when Nixon crossed the Pacific to make nice with Chairman Mao.
The GOP’s objections are just the usual ODS, banging of spoons on their high chairs.
If President Romney had normalized relations with Cuba, they’d be calling for his Nobel Peace Prize.
beltane
@Adam: Two wrong most certainly don’t make a right. Unfortunately, the Bush administration put this country in the position of a syphilitic old whore standing on a street corner shouting “Slut!” at passing high school girls while waiting for clients. We can lecture all we want but we can no longer lecture credibly.
Yatsuno
@Tom Levenson: It’s an unproven statement, really. We honestly have no idea just what atrocities the Cuban government has committed against its own people. This is not to excuse anything at Guantanamo by a long shot. Glenn is doing his usual gratuitous swipes, as is his wont.
Cacti
@beltane:
Two wrong most certainly don’t make a right. Unfortunately, the Bush administration put this country in the position of a syphilitic old whore standing on a street corner shouting “Slut!” at passing high school girls while waiting for clients. We can lecture all we want but we can no longer lecture credibly.
Even if the CIA torture program, and the Iraq war had never taken place, there would still be no logically or morally defensible position for continued throwing of the cold shoulder to Cuba. We’ve had normalized relations with Vietnam for almost 20 years now, FFS.
We do $600 billion in annual trade with China and Saudi Arabia, maybe the two greatest human rights sewers on earth.
beltane
Here is a list of the Top 5 other dictatorships the US has diplomatic relations with: http://www.juancole.com/2014/12/dictatorships-diplomatic-relations.html The list does not even interlude countries such as Uzbekistan which have pretty awful records of human rights abuses.
FlipYrWhig
Snowden was bound for Cuba at one point, was he not?
Bobby Thomson
@Cacti: I agree with both you and Beltane. I think most of the really bad stuff actually happened on the other side of the pond, but it’s irrelevant.
Doug r
Glenn Zilla and his fanboys have a lot of trouble with separation of powers.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Yatsuno: This was going to be pretty much the point of my post but you beat me, with this caveat: we know what America does because we publish it. The Cubans could have been chopping up babies for food, and we would never know about it, because they DON’T publish anything and have the ability to make that stick.
In Greenwaldland, this obviously means America is worse than Cuba. I’d make no claims to that, either way. One can simply not know. What we do know is that America has and is doing some horrific shit that is not OK, and we shouldn’t be doing it. You don’t need to drag other countries into that discussion for it to mean something.
Zandar
@Tom Levenson: True.
Although “Over the last decade” conveniently finds a way to indict Obama slightly more than Bush for these abuses, which is always going to be GG’s point.
beltane
@Cacti: The policy has always been silly. Even in a just a Latin American context when you consider the governments the US did have diplomatic relations with in that region over the past decades. Worse, we actively supported the regimes of many of those other human rights abusing countries.
Felonius Monk
But it is rather amusing to listen to the U.S. Senate’s Chief Pants-Crapper Lindsey Graham weep and wail and gnash his teeth over this.
Yatsuno
@Zandar: WORSE THAN BUSH! SOLD US OUT! DR JILL STEIN OR YOU’RE NOT PURE ENOUGH! SNOWDEN IS GOD!
Did I get that right?
Liberty60
See that’s the thing- if the argument stings when applied to our side, maybe we should do some self reflection instead of going into a defensive crouch.
I yield to no one in my unapologetic praise of Obama- he is by far the best president we have had since LBJ, but like LBJ, his hawkishness could stand examination.
srv
What’s wrong with this picture?
Wingnuts now say Goss wasn’t a prisoner.
kc
@Liberty60:
Never gonna happen.
kc
@srv:
Um, what IS that thing on the table?
srv
@kc: Look harder.
LAC
@Liberty60: or maybe we should consider the source since greenwald and billmon were busy shitting all over Elizabeth warren last week. Hard to look in the mirror when you got greenwald preening in it with his fanboys blowing him kisses.
gene108
@Cacti:
Not anymore.
The GOP once followed the lead of its leaders, so they did not undercut Nixon meeting with Mao or Reagan negotiating with Gorbachev.
I can’t see them backing a Republican President, who does something that is not in step with the group-think of the Republican base and the Republican apparatus.
Congressional Republicans killed GWB’s attempt at immigration reform.
FlipYrWhig
@Liberty60: Obama’s hawkishness? Is that like Calvin Coolidge’s bonhomie?
FlipYrWhig
@LAC: Gadfly’s gotta gad.
LAC
@FlipYrWhig: yes indeed! :-)
Keith G
Yes, the guy has issues. Lordy, we all know he has issues. And, like all human beings separate from the things he gets wrong, he gets some things right.
Mart
I do not see it as GG claiming Bush/Obama was worse than the other. It is a reflection of us, the USA. Polls show we love torture, ’cause it works, amirite? Only liberals lie that it doesn’t. Polls show folks do not want the evil Gitmo detainees on our soil.
We put hundreds? of thousands of our fellow citizens in solitary confinement in private prison systems every day (yes that is torture) and none of us give a shit.
The country is foul. Not all of us, but most of us.
Capri
@Alex S.: Here’s my conspiracy theory. The movie is a steaming pile of crap, which would have gone straight to video except for the A-listy-ness of the actors. This way Sony can send it straight to video with a boatload of publicity behind it.
Spinwheel
@Zandar: You will literally say anything in order to defend Obama. No amount of semantic asslicking is too little for you.
LAC
@Zandar: hey, your Glen Close is back. The bus was early today.
Villago Delenda Est
@Marc: Exactly.
GG’s outrage is at the blah guy. His recent criticism of Dick Cheney, for example, was so vehement that I….oh, wait.
Liberty60
@Keith G: Yes-
One of the mistakes I made when I was a conservative was to fall for the team loyalty above reason.
Blind squirrels do find nuts, stopped clocks are correct twice aday, and sometimes our guy makes mistakes.
What makes Greenwald such a poor vehicle for criticism is that he is like Bill Kristol’s doppelganger- all high contrast good vs evil, with no nuance or ability for pragmatism.
Having said that- the foreign policy mistakes are few and far between- the executive assassinations in particular. Overall , Obama has demonstrated a pretty nuanced and masterful way of dealing with the world.
And further, I grant that some of his military posture is predicated on domestic politics, the art of the possible.
burnspbesq
@LAC:
I missed that. For what, and to what end?
Omnes Omnibus
@Capri: That’s not a conspiracy theory; that’s a marketing plan.
Belafon
@Spinwheel: Pathetic. I would almost bet that Zandar hacked your account just to make him look good. Are you taking lessons from Sony, Zandar?
LAC
@burnspbesq: @burnspbesq: apparently something to do with Israel. A purity test by the boy from ipanema that she failed. A lot of bitchy snark back and forth on twitter with billmon about her.
Zandar
@Belafon: Much easier to edit comments to say “Zandar is awesome and stuff.”
FlipYrWhig
@LAC: A Northeastern Democrat who speaks up in support of Israel? Perish the thought! What’s next, a California Democrat who supports Silicon Valley?
Marc
@LAC:
He does strike me as the sort of guy who has a Zandar voodoo doll….
LAC
@Marc: there is a terrified rabbit in a cage somewhere in that basement apt. Crazzzy
LAC
@FlipYrWhig: apparently she sounds like Netanyahu, so we are suckers for supporting her, blah blah blah
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@srv: Uncle Che!
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who also wonders what that gun-like thing on the table is.)
tybee
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
laser pistol. 40 watt. phased.
Liberty60
@Omnes Omnibus:
Y’know, that sentence fits so many things.
Omnes Omnibus
@Liberty60: I’ve already copyrighted it, so watch your step.
vhh
It will be interesting to see how we get from re opening diplomatic relations with Cuba to . . .. closing the Gitmo detenion center. I read up on the treaty, which talks about Gitmo being used only as a naval coaling station. Hmm.
Kathleen
@burnspbesq: Warren supports Israel something something therefore something evil something not pure and DRONEZ and SPYING!!!!! Or something. Bob Cesca posted an article about it at the Daily Banter and Billmon told Bob in comments he was not the sharpest tool in the shed. Or something.
burnspbesq
@Kathleen:
In other words, a big pie-fight by the four-year-olds at day care.
Put them all in time out until their parents come to pick them up.
Jack Hughes
For Republicans, it’s never about policy — it’s only about propaganda.
Republicans abandoned actually policy with the Gingrich Revolution.
The Raven on the Hill
And Tuesday Google announced they are moving their browser PGP implementation to GitHub. It is on the way.
Why is it so hard to believe both that Obama has been very bad on the national security state and the economy and that the Republicans would have been worse?
Amir Khalid
@Zandar:
Zandar is awesome, and stuff.
AxelFoley
So fucking hilarious that GG complains about Gitmo when he 100% supported the muthafucka that sent the detainees there in the first place.
Per my usual, fuck him and his supporters.
AxelFoley
@Zandar:
Bingo.
AxelFoley
@Liberty60:
Wut?