The Washington Post editorial page, which can be quite prescient when not talking complete nonsense on Iraq, agrees with me that the real outrage emerging from the Hillary/Mark Penn imbroglio is that Penn is being fired for lobbying in favor of free trade with Colombia. The Post makes the achingly obvious case for the free-trade pact and comes up with another example of my man Obama’s penchant for talking complete nonsense. Bashing the current Colombian government, Obama says “You’ve got a government that is under a cloud of potentially having supported violence against unions, against labor, against opposition.” Not that the government has supported violence, or that it is suspected of supporting violence, but that it’s under a cloud of potentially supporting violence. Obama, you’re under a cloud of potentially being a jive turkey.
Afterwords
The Post doesn’t get into the fact that both Hillary and Obama aren’t playing the anti-trade card so much as the (hidden) anti-Latino card. Both Democratic candidates are convinced that their party is on a nativist, xenophobic tear, and they’re going to cater to that bigotry, goddamn it, come hell or high water.
The Post also doesn’t get into the fact that the biggest favor we could do the Colombians (and the rest of Latin America) is end the goddamn war on drugs, a bootless boondoggle eclipsed only (and barely) by the war in Iraq.
