In essence, that's what supporters of lifting the Cuba travel ban think the limitations on freedoms and rights violations of the Cuban people is: Background Noise.
Because it's all about the rights of Americans to travel and who gives a rats ass about that same right being afforded to the Cuban people.
The last line of the linked article, from Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat who sponsored the lift the travel ban bill, is truly a classic in Congressional cluelessness:
Do you think there will be a ghost of a chance of saying we are going to now restrict the right of the American people to travel to China?
Gee, I dont know, Senator. Tell me, how is that human rights thing working out in China?
Felony snowball throwing charges have been leveled against two Virginia college students for allegedly pelting a city plow and an undercover police car during Saturday's blizzard. Charles Gill and Ryan Knight, both 21, were nabbed by cops in Harrisonburg, where they attend James Madison University. According to police, the pair first targeted a city plow last Saturday afternoon. The driver responded by calling cops to report the frosty fusillade.
But ... who is Zapata? Why has he been subjected to such torture? Why should his punishment be so long?
Zapata Tamayo is a black Cuban and a front-line opponent of the Castro dictatorship -- clear enough reasons for him to be punished. He is a member of the illegal Alternative Republican Movement whose work focused on taking to the streets and explaining person-to-person about the atrocities of the Cuban military regime against its people. But for the Cuban government, all black people, supposedly, ought to pay homage to Fidel Castro, "the liberator of the black race, and the good master who came to free us blacks." And that was exactly the lesson that Zapata did not want to accept.
As you know, Marco Rubio will be making the opening keynote address this year at CPAC and, thanks to you all, I will be traveling up to DC next Wednesday night to cover this historic event. (If you haven't had a chance to donate to help me defray the costs, you can do so right here.)
I will also have a few minutes with Marco for a short Q&A while at the convention and since you all are the trip sponsors, who better to ask the questions?
Peyton Manning Voodoo doll gets the treatment Sahhh-dy night in a New Orleans French Kwa-dah Hotel!
I give you the Football "Experts":
“It’s hard to go against Peyton Manning. He will do just about whatever he has to do to win the football game. He’s the best.” Jack Nicklaus
“Indianapolis, 27-20. Peyton Manning will be the difference. The Saints won’t be able to stop him.” Bill O’Reilly
" Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts opened as a four-point favorite to beat New Orleans in the Super Bowl. Oddsmaker Sean Van Patten of Las Vegas Sports Consultants said the firm gave that line after watching New Orleans struggle to beat the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC championship game Sunday night. "
Amigos, I've attended 46 Mardi Gras'--But DAT was nothing compared to DIS!!!! We were in the very 'freakin epicenter of this stuff!!..we've been in the French Kwa-dah since Friday night!!
Remember that Marco Rubio needs your help raising money as we approach the anniversary of the famous hug. Here's Good Time Charlie trying claim he wasn't in favor of the president's "stimulus" package which all conservatives called "porkulus" at the time and that now Charlie calls "the darn thing".
No Charlie, you didn't have a vote on the darn thing but you used your popularity at the time to try to sway Florida's GOP congressional delegation to vote FOR it. NOT A SINGLE ONE LISTENED TO YOUR ADVICE. You are out of synch with conservatives Charlie. And in Florida in 2010 that's not a good thing to be.
I know saving gas is a good thing, and really, I'm sorry for all the Toyota owners. That said, I hope I never get stuck in traffic behind one of these commie pod cars again. Oh, and I just love trying to get around them when they are going 40 in the fast lane.
Flickr photo by lil 1/2 pint.
Now if we could only recall the one on the stickers.
In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington's C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy.
Today would have been Ronald Wilson Reagan's 99th birthday. In these troubling times it is a comfort to realize that the American people chose this man twice to our president, in landslides. Conservatism is America's philosophy. No one, save Goldwater or Buckley or Limbaugh, can claim to have brought conservatism -- the philosophy of our founders -- into the mainstream more than Reagan.
Republicans believe every day is the 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15. --Ronald Reagan
There was a time when the MSM sometimes did their job vis á vis Cuba. To all those who want to end the embargo and normalize relations with Cuba, and to all those taking cheap shots at the Cuban exile community because some exercised their free speech rights and complained because they were offended that lackeys for the butchers came to Miami and played some music, as if there hasn't been 51 years of barbaric brutality in Cuba; well you can shove it up your ass and go straight to hell.
Don't like Gitmo? Well then I can't wait to hear the demands to shut down Cuba's gulags and free the political prisoners held there. I can't wait for the demands to end human rights violations in Cuba.
Read this account of life in the tropical gulag circa 1963 from Time, and multiply by decades.
"...All told, the OAS commission studied 1,350 case histories. It is estimated that there are some 75,000 political prisoners (one out of every 94 Cubans) behind bars. The commission found that they have no human rights, that they are treated in a "humiliating, oppressive and despotic manner," and that the Cuban prison system seems openly designed to degrade its victims to the level of animals.
Verdicts in Advance. Arrests are almost always violent and without warrants; arresting officers rarely show proof that they are agents of the law, but burst into their quarry's home at night, brush off his explanations, wreck his belongings, pocket his valuables and hustle him off to jail in his underwear. Verdicts, said one court stenographer who took part in many of the trials, are "by remote control," the judge's opinion often written in advance.
In old colonial fortresses, says the commission, dungeons flooded by underground seepage and infested with rats have been reopened for political prisoners. A former judge testified that "special-punishment prisoners are put into cells too small to lie down in, where they can never bathe and their physiological functions must be performed on the floor." At a huge prison on the Isle of Pines, off Cuba's south coast, 10,000 prisoners live in a space for 5,000. Those consigned to solitary are dropped naked into pits and regularly drenched with water. Says one Isle of Pines prisoner, confined to solitary for six months: "An individual can't go on being naked. It's really terrible, for one becomes an animal." The place has also been mined—to kill the prisoners in case of invasion.
Fun for the Guards. Common criminals are assigned as trusties in the political prisons, are encouraged to beat the anti-Castro inmates with clubs and lengths of pipe. The regular guards are even worse. At the Isle of Pines during the Bay of Pigs invasion, all prisoners were herded into the open, stripped, forced to kneel and advised to pray. A prisoner named René Santana prayed aloud that the invaders would triumph; a guard blew his brains out. At La Cabaña in Havana, the guards amused themselves by ordering prisoners outside, where they are stripped, beaten with gun butts and jabbed with bayonets. Among those testifying was a woman whose husband was in prison; he had "a bleeding furrow on his wrists," the result of his being "strung up like a ham."
Food is a mockery. Rotten beans—"a special treat"—caused gagging, bloody vomiting and dysentery among 95% of the prisoners on the Isle of Pines. Those who fall sick are usually left to cure themselves, or die. A former Isle of Pines inmate described a typical case: "A man named Yáñez had an attack of epilepsy and fell from the second floor. He remained some ten or twelve hours without attention ... A few hours after he was taken out of there, he died."
This nightmare continues 90 miles off the US coast, the place travel agents can't wait to sell you a ticket to, the place where members of congress, many having enjoyed the bloody tyrants hospitality, can't wait to sell their states goods. This is the place where so-called Cuba "experts" talk about reform, and the need to get beyond "cold war thinking and policy."
I think it's time to stop covering up for mass murdering dictators and demand justice for their victims.
recent comments
Val Prieto: Id like to clear up one thing about the “clash” Honey mentioned. From what I have heard, it...
Cubanita: I also want to know about that buzz Honey mentioned related to gays… Contingency plan in case the...
Alley Kat: I’m sorry Honey if we disagree on this one. I have always liked Jindal and still do, but I do not...
Gigi: Aawwww, now, be nice. See how the marxists provide jobs for the proletariat, including world’s oldest...
Gigi: Please ask him specifically for what he intends to do about illegal immigration.
Gigi: Wow – a true hero. His example is what will be in the history books when all this blows over. Bigoted...
FreedomForCuba: I must admit unlike Cuba, this is the much better version of the Venezuelan “Jineteras”. Well, what...