SACREBLEU! The Big Bad Barry is prancing overseas and making a mockery of the U. S. of A. yet again. What did he do this time?
This:
Fresh off the latest round of controversy regarding when and where it’s appropriate to take a photo of yourself, President Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt apparently snapped a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, where they’re all guests.
The photo shows the three smiling for a smartphone while Michelle Obama stares into the distance. A series of hilarious follow-up photos, practically screaming for a caption contest, show Obama laughing with Thorning-Schmidt and touching her arm before turning inexplicably somber. The first lady looks stern -- dare we say disapproving? -- throughout.
The right-wing is torn right now, trying to figure out whether they want to piss themselves over
Obama shaking hands with Raul Castro or taking a selfie with David Cameron and the Danish Prime Minister. Drudge's 4 top stories have to do with the Terrorist
Fistjab Handshake of Doom, while almost all of the right-wing Facebook groupies are busting over the selfie.
I'm sure they really care about respecting dead black guy more than hating the alive black guy, right? I mean, Republicans were
so
Cheney's staunch resistance to the Anti-Apartheid Act arose as an issue during his future campaigns on the presidential ticket, but the Wyoming Republican has never said he regretted voting the way he did. In fact, in 2000, he maintained that he'd made the right decision.
“The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization," Cheney said on ABC's "This Week." "I don't have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago.''
in
Reagan himself never seemed to really understand the moral repugnance of apartheid. He described the system in a 1988 interview with ABC's Sam Donaldson as "a tribal policy more than ... a racial policy."
love
Reagan vetoed the compromised bill on September 26, calling it "economic warfare" and alleging that it would mostly hurt the impoverished black majority and lead to more civil strife.
with
Ronald Reagan was angry. It was October 1986, and his veto against the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act had just been overridden — and by a Republican-controlled Senate, at that.
He had appeared on TV a month earlier to warn Americans against the Anti-Apartheid Act, decrying it as "immoral" and "utterly repugnant." Congress disagreed, and one month later, it produced the two-thirds majority needed to override Reagan and pass tough new measures against South Africa's apartheid government.
Mandela,
Senate Nay Votes on Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986
right?
When Nelson Mandela was convicted of "193 counts of terrorism committed between 1961 and 1963, including the preparation, manufacture and use of explosives, including 210,000 hand grenades, 48,000 anti-personnel mines, 1,500 time devices, 144 tons of ammonium nitrate," his trial had observers from around the free world. "The trial has been properly conducted," wrote Anthony Sampson, correspondent for the liberal London Observer. "The judge, Mr Justice Quartus de Wet, has been scrupulously fair." Sampson admitted this though his own sympathies veered strongly towards Mandela. (Indeed, Sampson went on to write Nelson Mandela's authorized biography.)
According to Anti-Apartheid activists a grand total of 3,000 political prisoners passed through South Africa’s Robben Island prison in roughly 30 years under the Apartheid regime, (all after trials similar to the one described above by Anthony Sampson.) Usually about a thousand were held. These were out of a South African population of 40 million. Here's what Mandela's "jail cell" looked like towards the end of his sentence.
Anyone who watched any sort of coverage of the memorial service itself knows that the service was a celebration of Mandela's life. Almost everyone who was there was dancing and singing and smiling and laughing. It was a celebration of what Mandela did for South Africa and the world. It wasn't supposed to be a solemn time of mourning like everything is here in the United States.
But they don't care. Pesky facts never got in the way of hating Obama before, so why start now?