So all George Zimmerman had to do was murder an innocent teenager. That’s it! That’s all he had to do for these Republican nuts to compare him to Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa!
His name is Jack Cashill. He is a contributor to a right wing blog called “World Net Daily.” Cashill, a huge defender of George Zimmerman, believes that Zimmerman did no wrong the night he murdered Trayvon, saying that Zimmerman is the least racist person in Florida. He then went on to say that if the U.S Justice Department went on to investigate George Zimmerman, “it’s like going after Nelson Mandela on Civil Rights or Mother Teresa!”
White House aide Ben Rhodes told reporters the two exchanged no words more substantive than a greeting.
The Cuban government said the gesture may show the “beginning of the end of the US aggressions”.
The US broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961 as Fidel Castro aligned with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
And on Tuesday after the handshake, a White House official said the Obama administration still had grave concerns about human rights violations in Cuba, Reuters reported.
Republicans on Capitol Hill were quick to condemn the gesture, with one Republican congresswoman chiding the move during a unrelated hearing on Tuesday.
“Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raul Castro, it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant,” Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is known for her opposition to the Castro government, told Secretary of State John Kerry.
“Could you please tell the Cuban people living under that repressive regime that, a handshake notwithstanding, the US policy toward the cruel and sadistic Cuban dictatorship has not weakened.”
Gradual thaw disrupted
The last US president to shake a Cuban leader’s hand was President Bill Clinton, who greeted President Fidel Castro, Raul’s brother and predecessor, at a 2000 UN General Assembly meeting.
Under President Obama, the US has eased restrictions on Cuban-Americans travelling to the island and on remittances between family members across the two countries
Fox News conveniently created this fake “War On Christmas.” claiming that people are taking “Christ” out of Christmas and using “Happy Holidays” instead. Well it seems Fox News is also waging a war on Christmas.
In this 2010 picture, Fox News dropped the “Christ” from their Christmas party announcement and proclaimed the Fox News “Holiday Party.”
Where are the War On Christmas policemen, Bill O’Reilly and Sarah Palin when you need them?
Jon Stewart kicked off this week’s “Daily Show” by shedding light on some truly odd reactions that some folks had about the passing of Nelson Mandela — including at least one prominent Republican.
Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz, to their credit, offered sincere notes of gratitude for the South African leader’s life work on their respective Facebook pages. What they did not expect, however, were the swift and racist reactions they saw from several of their fans. Example: “This clench-first gorilla [sic] warrior does not deserve respect from informed Americans,” one user wrote on Gingrich’s Facebook.
Stewart was hardly surprised by the outpouring of bile. “Of course, that’s why the Internet was invented,” he said. “To say hateful things with greater efficiency, reach and freedom to keep people from finding out how truly disgusting you are in your home. ‘I would never say those things, it was Dr. Awesomeballs69!'”
Racist Facebook fans are one thing, but Stewart could not let an actual Republicanleader off the hook so easily. Rick Santorum, appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor,” somehow equated apartheid, South Africa’s former system of segregation that Mandela helped end, to the Affordable Care Act.
“The systemic subjugation of a race of people is different than the establishment of subsidized insurance exchanges,” Stewart helpfully explained before channeling his inner Julie Andrews with a “Sound of Music” parody: “Obamacaaare is not apartheeeeeid!”
Huckabee, who finished a strong second place in South Carolina’s 2008 primary, polls at 18 percent in the survey. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) comes in second place with 17 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is in third with 14 percent of the vote and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) pulls 13 percent. No other candidate reaches double digits.
President Obama at a memorial on Tuesday in South Africa called the late Nelson Mandela “the last great liberator of the 20th century” who “earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness” along with “persistence and faith.”
Under a rainy sky at the start of summer in South Africa, Obama honored the nation’s first black president and anti-apartheid leader, who was a source of inspiration in Obama’s adult life.
He likened the late leader to Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and said he “speaks to what is best inside us.”
“His struggle was your struggle,” Obama said, speaking at First National Bank Stadium before an estimated crowd of tens of thousands of people including British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, Oprah Winfrey and Bono.
“His triumph was your triumph. Your dignity and hope found expression in his life, and your freedom, your democracy is his cherished legacy.”
Obama compared Mandela to another of his heroes: Lincoln. He said when Mandela emerged from his time in prison “without force of arms, he would, like Abraham Lincoln, hold his country together when it threatened to break apart.”
The president said “Madiba” showed the world “the power of action of taking risks on behalf of our ideals. And he quoted Mandela’s own words saying, “I’m not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
South Africans affectionately call Mandela “Madiba,” which is a term of endearment and has become a nickname. It is a family name and is derived from a chief who ruled in the 18th century, according to the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
McLEAN, Va. — U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida lost $18 million in a scheme that cheated him and about 120 other investors out of more than $35 million, according to court papers.
The Virginia man who ran the scheme, William Dean Chapman, was sentenced Friday in federal court to 12 years in prison. Prosecutors say Chapman used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle including a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and a $3 million home.
In most of the court papers, Grayson’s identity is protected — prosecutors say only that an elected official with the initials A.G. was the primary victim — but documents twice mention Grayson by name. The Democratic congressman on Monday confirmed he is the A.G. mentioned in the documents.
Nothing in the court papers suggests Grayson was anything but a victim of the scheme. Grayson, a former trial attorney, said he has had a long record for picking winning stocks, which formed the basis for his personal fortune.
The scheme worked like this: clients would turn over their stocks to Chapman as collateral for a loan, and Chapman would let customers borrow about 90 percent of the stocks’ value.
If the stocks did badly, borrowers could walk away and keep the money they were loaned. But if the borrowers’ stocks did well, they would repay the loan with interest, and Chapman was supposed to return the stocks to the investor at their increased value.
But, according to court papers, Chapman sold the stocks and had no way to fulfill his obligations if a client’s stock portfolio did well.
“That’s why (Chapman) is going to prison for a long, long time,” Grayson said. “At least in the end, some kind of justice was served.”
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has waded into the health care debate with a broad endorsement of the kind of universal health plan found in Europe, Canada and South Korea.
“I am not an expert in health care, or Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, or however you choose to describe it, but I do know this: I have benefited from that kind of universal health care in my 55 years of public life,” Powell said, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal, last week at an annual “survivors celebration breakfast” in Seattle for those who, like Powell, have battled prostate cancer. “And I don’t see why we can’t do what Europe is doing, what Canada is doing, what Korea is doing, what all these other places are doing.”
Europe, Canada and Korea all have a “single-payer” system, in which the government pays for the costs of health care.
Some Democrats who strongly advocated for, and failed to get, a single-payer system in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, still believe the current law doesn’t go far enough to reform the US health system.
A retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell told the audience about a woman named Anne, who as his firewood supplier, faced a healthcare scare of her own. Anne asked Powell to help pay for her healthcare bills, as her insurance didn’t cover an MRI she needed as a prerequisite to being treated for a growth in her brain. In addition, Powell’s wife Alma recently suffered from three aneurysms and an artery blockage. “After these two events, of Alma and Anne, I’ve been thinking, why is it like this?” said Powell.
“We are a wealthy enough country with the capacity to make sure that every one of our fellow citizens has access to quality health care,” Powell. “(Let’s show) the rest of the world what our democratic system is all about and how we take care of all of our citizens.”
Vice President Cheney said on Monday that the deal the U.S. and its international partners reached with Iran last month over its nuclear program is suspect because of some of the Obama administration’s initial missteps in implementing the president’s new health care law.
“I don’t think that Barack Obama believes that the U.S. is an exceptional nation,” Cheney complained on Fox and Friends. “Nobody cares much in the Middle East anymore what the U.S. thinks because we don’t keep our commitments.”
The former vice president moved to Iran and without mentioning any specific criticisms of the agreement, claimed it’s bad because of unrelated health care issues. “We don’t follow through and Iran we’ve got a very serious problem going forward and a deal now been cut,” he said. “The same people that brought us you can keep your insurance if you want are telling us they’ve got a great deal in Iran with respect to their nuclear program. I don’t believe it.”
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh lashed out the press and the White House this Friday for making Nelson Mandela’s death “all about Obama.”
“Without Mandela there might not have been an Obama? I’ll tell you who’s putting this out there. It’s Obama doing everything and anything he can to link himself to Mandela, and the Clintons are the same thing. We got a nickname for him, The Funeral Crashers. I mean, they’ll show up anywhere where there’s a camera. This kind of stuff, the Drive-Bys, I’m telling you, they’re doing everything they can to make the news of Mandela’s death all about Obama,” he said.
President Barack Obama has made no secret about the fact that the late South African leader was an inspiration.
“I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example set by Nelson Mandela,” he said during an official statement following the 95-year-old’s death.
Limbaugh, as per usual, was unimpressed.
“Now, if you’re Obama — speaking quite honestly here, folks — who could blame Obama for thinking everything is about him?,” Limbaugh said. “The media makes everything about him.”
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