Obama Shakes Hand With Raul Castro; Right Prepares to Freak Out

 

At Nelson Mandela’s memorial ceremony today, President Obama shook hands with Cuba’s Raul Castro. The Guardian reports:

The controversial handshake with Castro is likely to dominate headlines back home in the US, where many conservatives fear the White House is preparing a broader rapprochement with communist leaders in Havana, but Obama’s surprisingly political speech also included veiled criticism of dictatorships that neglect human rights and conservatives who ignore inequality.

Will conservatives flip out over this? The quickest way to find out is a trip to The Corner, and Mona Charen comes through:

Alan Gross has been rotting in a Cuban prison for going on five years….That the Obama administration has not seen to his release is outrage enough — but to witness the handshake between Obama and Raul Castro makes the stomach turn. Even without the Gross case, the nature of the Cuban regime should be enough to cause our president to find some way to avoid a handshake. Shameful day to be an American.

OK then. Cue freakout. It’s near the top of Drudge too, and if it weren’t for Matt Drudge’s peculiar preoccupation with weather news, it would probably have a screaming siren there. I guess this is going to be the right’s shiny new toy for the week.

 

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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