The selfie seen around the world.

Helle Thorning better stop trying to push up on O. If Scarlett Johansson  didn't make him bite, I know she doesn't really think that she has a shot at catching our leader's eye.

Madam Prime Minister you better stop. Do you see that sister sitting there to the right? Well she isn't trying to have that.

I know that you are just pulling a smoke screen with all this selfie stuff, we know what this is really all about..... Let me stop. I kid folks, I kid.

Anyway, what I am not kidding about is the ridiculously misplaced outrage that folks on the right were showing about not only that incident, but about the president shaking the hand of...gasp, Raul Castro.

"During a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) asked Secretary of State John Kerry pointedly about President Barack Obama’s reportedly spontaneous handshake with Cuban leader Raul Castro. She accused the Cuban dictator of possessing “bloody hands” used to brutally repress his people. Kerry, for his part, agreed that Cuba’s human rights record is problematic.

After asking questions about the proposed Iranian nuclear deal and Iraq, Ros-Lehtinen pivoted to Obama’s handshake with Castro.

“Mr. Secretary, 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,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

“Castro uses that hand to sign the orders to repress and jail democracy advocates.” [Source]

Ok, idiots like Rush and Glen Beck I can understand, but this woman is an elected official. Is she really this stupid? Like what was Obama going to do? Ignore the man (a guest of the Mandela family) and create a real international incident? He shook his hand. He didn't sit down for an hour long meeting about how to improve Cuban American relations. Which, to be honest, wouldn't be a bad thing at this time in our history.

This was a memorial service that was celebrating the life of a man who would have had no problem with shaking the hand of a Communist, or of a racist who held him captive for 27 years for that matter.  

So anyway, just to make sure I wasn't missing something, I checked to see if other American presidents had shook hands with other leaders of Communist countries and dictators in the past. And, sure enough, I found quite a few examples. There is Nixon and Mao; there is Reagan and Mobuto; there is Ford and Pinochet...you get the picture.

With all due respect to Ed Shultz; these people really do believe that the President can catch Communism from a handshake.

Finally, I started on a light note, and I would like to end on one. Well actually it's not funny, because a man lost his life for crying out loud.

So the guy who committed suicide after shopping with his girlfriend should have given me a call before he took to such extreme measures.

 

First, he violated a cardinal rule: Do not go into the store when shopping with your wife or significant other. He should have found a nice spot in that mall to sit and do some people watching and kept his cell phone on.

 

Honestly, when I look in my wife's --very large--- closet, I don't think of committing suicide, rather, I feel empathy for the poor shoe salesmen around Philadelphia and various other venues who had to put in the work to help her pick just the "perfect" shoe for a particular outfit or handbag.

 

"A Chinese man reportedly committed suicide in a crowded mall over the weekend after arguing with his girlfriend about her shopping.

According to Chinese media reports, the man jumped to his death Saturday at the Golden Eagle Shopping Complex in the city of Xuzhou after an afternoon of shopping with his girlfriend. It is believed that the man was about 40 years old.

Quoting witnesses of the tragedy, Guangming Online reports that the man had been arguing with his girlfriend before he climbed over a seventh-floor railing and leapt to his death. The couple's fight may have started when the man expressed concerns over his girlfriend's expensive purchases.

Graphic surveillance footage from after the incident shows that the man landed in the mall's atrium, near a number of cosmetics counters. He is believed to have died on impact."

May he rest in peace.

If only crass consumerism had not found its way to his part of the world.