Tuesday Short Cuts
The View’s Whoopi Goldberg says “the U.S. is in no condition to lecture” Cuba. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.
Insight: “The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured.” —Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
For the record: “Let’s not mince words: Otto Warmbier was an American kid who made one foolish mistake, one that should not have cost him his life. The North Korean regime arrested him on unjust grounds, possibly as a bargaining chip in negotiations, and ultimately tortured him to death. … There is no good reason for any American citizen to go to a land where they can be arrested at any time for any reason and tortured to death.” —Jim Geraghty
Dezinformatsiya: “Bigoted Homophobe Steve Scalise’s Life Was Saved by a Queer Black Woman.” —Fusion’s Anne Branigin
Alpha Jackass: “For violent resistance to work it’d need to be organized. Individual acts can be understandable, but likely counterproductive/ineffective. What’s more harmful: Putting millions already on the margins more at-risk via draconian policies, or shooting a racist lawmaker in the hip?” —Huffington Post’s Jesse Benn
Braying Jenny: “You have people on the Right … trying to sort of make themselves the victim. They seem to crave this idea of being the victims of hate.” —MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid
Braying Jackass: “There is not a single good person who voted for Trump. Not one.” —columnist Patrick S. Tomlinson
Non Compos Mentis: “On Friday the White House … announced that they are reversing the Obama administration’s steps to normalize relations with Cuba because of their human rights violations. … Cuban officials said, really? Because the U.S. is in no condition to lecture us about human rights given the racial discrimination happening in America now.” —Whoopi Goldberg
Useful idiots: “In the Soviet era, most villagers worked on huge collective farms. Life wasn’t easy, but the government provided for the people.” —NBC News correspondent Lucy Kafanov
And last… “Charity is the outdated idea that people can help each other without guns involved.” —Frank Fleming