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
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.
President Obama used his weekly address to continue his call for Congress to extend unemployment benefits.
… if Members of Congress don’t act before they leave on their vacations, 1.3 million Americans will lose this lifeline. These are people we know. They’re our friends and neighbors; they sit next to us in church and volunteer in our communities; their kids play with our kids. And they include 20,000 veterans who’ve served this country with honor.
… We also have to look out for the Americans working hard to get those jobs. That’s why, as a country, we offer temporary unemployment insurance – so that job-seekers don’t fall into poverty, and so that when they get that job, they bounce back more quickly.
For many families, it can be the difference between hardship and catastrophe.
It makes a difference for a mother who suddenly doesn’t know if she’ll be able to put food on the table for her kids. It makes a difference for a father who lost his job and is looking for a new one. Last year alone, it lifted 2.5 million people out of poverty, and cushioned the blow for many more.
US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will travel to South Africa next week to pay their respects to the late Nelson Mandela together with former first couple George W. and Laura Bush.
Ex-president Bill Clinton, who was in office when Mandela took power to become South Africa’s first black president, also said that he would be making the trip with his family.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obamas would “participate in memorial events” for the iconic leader who died Thursday at age 95.
Carney declined to provide more details on the trip, saying more information would be provided once it becomes available.
How can you call yourself a Christian, even created a nice special name for yourself like Christian Conservative. How can you honestly say that you follow the teachings of Christ, but you listen religiously to this crazy heathen named Rush Limbaugh?
Oh I know, I know. You put your politics ahead of your religious beliefs and you prefer to listen to the heathen instead of the Pope. Especially if the heathen is critical of the Pope because the Pope preaches love, compassion and advises us to help the least among us. That message is right up your alley, so the heathen wins!
Carry on then Christian Conservative, carry on. You are known by the company you keep.
They are frantic. These Republicans are running out of options. All the lies they have told about the president is falling by the wayside. So the next move in their playbook? Impeachment… for absolutely… no reason! He’s a Democratic President, so impeachment is their natural inclination. It’s what they do!
History will record that on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2013, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary met to consider the impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama.
They didn’t use that word, of course. Republican leaders frown on such labeling because it makes the House majority look, well, crazy.
It is, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said from the dais, “the word that we don’t like to say in this committee, and I’m not about to utter here in this particular hearing.”
One of the majority’s witnesses, Georgetown law professor Nicholas Rosenkranz, encouraged the Republicans not to be so shy. “I don’t think you should be hesitant to speak the word in this room,” he said. “A check on executive lawlessness is impeachment.”
This gave the lawmakers courage. “I’m often asked this,” said Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) “You got to go up there, and you just impeach him.”
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.), who has said there are enough votes in the House to impeach Obama, added: “We’ve also talked about the I-word, impeachment, which I don’t think would get past the Senate in the current climate. . . . Is there anything else we can do?”
Why, yes, there is, congressman: You can hold hearings that accomplish nothing but allow you to sound fierce for your most rabid constituents.
The Republicans in the House know there is no chance of throwing this president from office. Yet at least 13 of the 22 Republicans on the panel have threatened or hinted at impeachment of Obama, his appointees or his allies in Congress. They’ve proposed this as the remedy to just about every dispute or political disagreement, from Syria to Obamacare.
President Obama spoke today on the need for economic mobility not only for the top one percent, but also for the middle class and those Americans trying to get into the middle class.
The big companies had their day on Black Friday so today, the day following the Black Friday extravaganza, is being observed as Small Business Saturday – supporting small local business. With that in mind, the President along with his two daughters Malia and Sasha took a trip down to the local book store – Washington’s Politics and Prose Bookstore – and… bought some books.
These people will never stop with their lies and misinformation. This time, like many other, the lies are coming from a so-called Pastor. His name is James David Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary Church. Pastor Manning is no stranger to lying. He is just as guilty as Donald Trump for pushing the lie that President Obama was born in Kenya.
Now that the Birther lie is not as strong as it once was, Pastor Manning is pushing another lie to his faithful followers – most of whom I’m sure are Republicans. In his new lie, the Pastor is claiming that President Obama and Miriam Carey, the Connecticut mother who was shot and killed in Washington when she tried to ram her car into police barricades, are parents of the child found in the dead woman’s car.
The pastor, citing no facts to back up his lie simply because there aren’t any, is telling anyone who will listen that her family has demanded a paternity test to prove that the President is indeed the father of her 15 month old child. The family has asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to look into the case but nothing has been said about paternity, in fact they are involved in a custody dispute with the child’s actual father.
In his latest rant Manning asserts that Carey’s sister has gathered the requisite number of signatures needed to require that the investigation be opened on her petition hosted by Change.org petition, insinuating that the petition carries some kind of legal weight. Change.org is a private sector business which hosts petitions for a fee and has absolutely no legal standing at all. Even if it did it is highly unlikely that 586 signatures would be sufficient to require action.
He claims that it was not the Capitol Police who shot her and that it was actually an elite “hit squad” operating under direct orders from the President. His source for this is a “news service” known as What Does It Mean? This website has a number of stories reminiscent of the National Enquirer with headlines such as Evidence That 5 Million Americans Have Been ‘Disappeared’ By Obama Shocks Russians.
Expect this to be the new truth for the low information Republicans, who are more than satisfied with taking nonsense and turning it into their version on the truth… especially when it involves the President of the United States. At some point, you have to believe that the President is shaking his head in disbelief at all these dumb people.
Things were hairy there for a couple of months, what with the government shutdown (Republicans’ fault) and the still incomprehensible fail of the healthcare website (all you, Democrats), but slowly and surely, things seem to be turning around, just in time for the holidays.
The best part, though, is that thousands of people are effectively signing up for health insurance through state exchanges and Medicaid, and will soon have a much better experience on healthcare.gov. I went on the site and breezed through the process here in New Jersey. In late October, that didn’t happen.
Of course, this will be a long, messy process. The Saudis and Israelis are wary and nervous about a reinvigorated Iran, and for good reason. Iran threatens the Saudi near-monopoly on oil in the region and their Sunni government is a natural enemy for the Iranian Shiite mullahs who really run the country. Israel is, of course, afraid that Iran will ignore any limits placed on it by a treaty and once their economy improves, will go ahead and build nuclear weapons and use them on Jerusalem.
If you thought it was difficult to solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue, then this will be well-nigh impossible, but it has to work. Iran once had a vibrant economy and the people are committed to a free-market system. The religious leaders might have to make more concessions to the business sector, as the Chinese Communist Party has done in the name of capitalism, and my sense is that a rising middle class will not look kindly on a regime that would threaten that prosperity with a risky and suicidal strike on Israel. And really, do you think Iran would nuke the Old City, with its timeless Muslim shrines? I might be naive, but I don’t.
As for the Saudis, they have been fed on American weapons and support, while suppressing any free speech or political movements that could give women the right to drive, much less tolerate a free press or alternative political parties. Yet we see them as an ally and the somewhat more free Iranians as the third leg of the axis of evil. Never forget that 15 of the 19 September 11 conspirators were radicalized Saudis. That says something about the level of repression inside that country. I suspect that their bigger fear is what their society will need to undergo in order to compete in a world where Iran and Iraq have freer economies.
Clearly, we are at the beginning of the process and Obama and Kerry have to make sure that Israel is protected from any mischief, nuclear or otherwise. But Israel also has to solve its own problem with settlements and a two state solution to the Palestinian problem. Interesting times indeed.
The Republicans, and some influential Democrats such as Charles Schumer of New York, have lined up against the Iran agreement and the Republicans continue to hope and pray that people don’t sign up for health care. In addition, the House has said that they won’t be voting on the immigration bill this year (though most Americans support a path to citizenship), and this while Chris Christie is considering supporting a Dreamer bill in New Jersey (or at least the idea of one). As long as the GOP hard right continues to play hardball, the Democrats will begin to look better and better as we move towards November. Something to be thankful for?
Paul Rosenberg: The week started off with news that former V.P. candidate Sarah Palin had compared the federal debt to slavery, and finished off with the New York Times and “Good Morning America” comparing problems with the rollout of Obamacare exchanges with Bush’s catastrophic non-response to Hurricane Katrina. Such comparisons are both ghastly and ludicrous — 1,833 people died in Katrina, while millions died due to slavery, not to mention the part where tens of millions lived their whole lives as slaves — yet conservatives can’t seem to stop themselves from glibly making them, equating slavery with anything they don’t like (except when they’re praising it), and Katrina with any problem President Obama might have. What’s more, the so-called liberal media seems less likely to challenge them than to follow their lead, or at least give them a pass.
Last month MSNBC’s Morgan Whittaker noted that Obamacare had joined a list of four other things that conservative politicians and media figures had compared to slavery just this year: abortion (Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and former Gov. Mike Huckabee); affirmative action (Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in Fisher v. University of Texas); welfare (Sen. Rand Paul [technically just “servitude”] and E.W. Jackson, GOP candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia); and gun control (Glenn Beck and Fox News host Shepard Smith). The slavery comparison is uniquely offensive, given the unfathomable evil that slavery was, but the way in which conservatives glibly treat it as a political plaything is anything but unique.
Case in point: As early as April 2010, Media Matters had counted eight different things that had been touted as “Obama’s Katrina,” including the BP oil spill (Limbaugh, Drudge, Fox.etc. vs. facts here); the GM bankruptcy (Politico, June 8, 2009); the H1N1 flu (Rush Limbaugh, Nov. 3, 2009); the Fort Hood shootings (Human Events, Nov. 11, 2009); the Christmas underwear bomber (Pajamas Media, Dec. 29, 2009); the Haiti earthquake (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 25, 2010); the Kentucky ice storms (Confederate Yankee, Feb. 1, 2010); and even housing policies in Chicago back when Obama was a state senator (Mickey Kaus, Slate, June 30, 2008).
Of course the list has kept growing since then, with the IRS and Benghazi as two top favorite additions. Conservatives are especially fond of Benghazi, since it lets them tweet things like “You could call #Benghazi Obama’s Watergate, except no one died,” as Texas Rep. Steve Stockman did on May 8, 2013. This elides the entire history of Watergate: It began with the Plumbers, formed to plug leaks in the wake of the Pentagon Papers (burglarizing Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist looking for dirt to smear Ellsberg with), the release of which was necessary because Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War was to continue the Vietnam War, in which tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers died. But it’s damn hard to fit all that into 140 characters. Hence the usefulness of the “Watergate” accusation.
When you see a graph like the one shown above it makes you wonder: what is it about this president, this particular president, that would make Republicans hate him so much?& A hate soo strong, that they’ve decided to do everything they can, even bringing the country to its knees, to make sure this president fails.
Their excuse is always the same – we are against the policies and the direction the president is taking the country. Yes, that would be admirable, but it’s not true.
The fact is, the policies Mr. Obama have implemented are not the left winged, Democratic wet dreams that Republicans must fight against. No, on the contrary. The president’s policies – maybe by design or purely unintentionally – are more center or right of center.
Take the Republican hated Obamacare for example. The idea of Obamacare was first instituted in Massachusetts by a Republican governor named Mitt Romney. And the dreaded “individual mandate” Republicans hate so much, was the brainchild of a right winged think tank called The Heritage Foundation.
But Obamacare was not all. There are more policies previously supported and even proposed by Republicans, that lost Republican favor when the president embraced those policies. A fact that even the President noticed, when he, on many occasions, called Republicans out for turning their backs on their own policies because those policies gained his support.
So if it’s not about policies, then it has to be about a man. What is it about the man that has Republicans so pissed off? So consumed with hate that they’re happily pushing the country over the edge hoping to point their finger to the man in charge and say, “see, he did it!”
It’s not Obama’s family that they hate, or his policies or even his party. And it’s not the president’s beliefs. What’s fueling the Republican’s hate is nothing more than the color of the President’s skin.
The graph above tells the whole story. All American presidents, a mixture of Democrats and Republicans. But the black dude on the left has seen more of his court nominations filibustered by Republicans than all the other presidents combined.
Republicans want you to think that they’re all for the Constitution. They’re the first to quote selected texts and point out what the Founding Fathers intended when they put the document together. But I’m sure they can’t find a passage in the Constitution that says one branch of government must do all they can to make sure the other branches fail… especially if the head of one of those branches is black.
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