Playing nice with our closest neighbors

What a strange concept: getting along and cooperating with our closest neighbors. . .

At summit, Obama gets friendly with Chavez

By MARK S. SMITH, Associated Press Writer
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – President Barack Obama extended a hand of friendship to America's hemispheric neighbors on Saturday at a summit where he offered a new beginning for U.S.-Cuba relations and accepted a book about the exploitation of Latin America from Venezuela's fiery, anti-American leader.
At the Summit of the Americas, Obama signaled he was ready to accept Cuban President Raul Castro's proposal of talks on issues once off-limits for Cuba, including the scores of political prisoners held by the communist government. Some countries at the summit pushed the United States to go further and lift the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the communist nation, which has complicated U.S. relations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
To Latin American nations reeling from a sudden plunge in exports, Obama promised a new hemispheric growth fund, an initiative to increase Caribbean security and a new regional partnership to develop alternative energy sources and fight global warming.

For someone who has watched his whole life as we acted like arrogant bullies toward our southern neighbors and whose parents, grandparents, g'grandparents, etc. watched the same, this is like sunshine on my soul.

"I have a lot to learn and I very much look forward to listening and figuring out how we can work together more effectively," Obama said.

WTF?! Humility on the part of an American president? What WILL the world think? How will be continue to be perceived as a bully and arrogant bunch of fucks with the president talking like that? Look out, the right wing lunatics will be talking treason.

As the first full day of meetings began on the two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, Obama exchanged handshakes and pats on the back with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who once likened President George W. Bush to the devil. In front of photographers, Chavez gave Obama a copy of "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," a book by Eduardo Galeano, which chronicles U.S. and European economic and political interference in the region. . . .

Their exchange on the first full day of meetings at the summit followed a brief grip and grin for cameras that the two leaders had on Friday night when Obama greeted him in Spanish.

"I think it was a good moment," Chavez said about their initial encounter. "I think President Obama is an intelligent man, compared to the previous U.S. president."

I think I agree with you totally on that Mr. Chavez.