"You deserve better, my friends, and we expect better..."

I have been listening to and reading about Daniel Hannan for a few years now. I imagine our Founding Fathers had more than a bit of the Brit left in their accents and proper English as they discussed and debated the basic founding of our republic post-Revolution. I find it striking that some of the loudest pro-American patriot voices have foreign accents, especially English accents. How ironic is it that the country we fought for our independence from over 235 years ago, and who fought back at us to keep us entangled with them, are now urging us to hold onto our republic and independence centuries later? Conservative people, such as Hannan and Mark Steyn, speak the strongest about this nation's best qualities, and warn us against following the rest of the socialist world off the cliff.

Love this guy.

Great Britain's Daniel Hannan at CPAC 2012:

Here is a bit of Mark Steyn's latest column, "The Church of Obama", regarding the "women's health" mandate that sparked last weeks major rift with the Catholic Church, and other religious sects, and the Obama administration, but I recommend reading it in full so as not to miss Steyn's sarcasm and dry humor therein...

The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius, and many others believe in one-size-fits-all national government — uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment — and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.

And a reminder from Pasha as he intimidates the good Dr. Yuri Zhivago with the stark reality they now live under. Yep, we are that red locomotive in Hannan's rearview mirror.

Speaks for itself...

Speaks for us.

Earlier this week Alberto posted a story on the upcoming primaries in Venezuela. You can gather the people of that country are hoping for change in their next presidential election. I believe many of us can sympathize with them. For over three years some of us have made the comparisons between Obama and Hugo Chavez. However, I found myself easily able to substitute Chavez's name with Obama's as I read this article...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan opposition supporters vote on Sunday in a primary likely to anoint youthful governor Henrique Capriles as the candidate to face socialist President Hugo Chavez in an October election that is already shaping up as a fierce fight.

Outwitted by Chavez since 1998, opposition leaders hope the nationwide ballot will galvanize their ranks, produce a unity candidate and help them finally unseat Chavez, whose mix of social spending and hostility to business has split the OPEC member nation's people.

Obviously I was able to ignore the "OPEC member" reference amid the blinding parallels because, under Obama, our nation is not only NOT an OPEC member, but cannot even enter into the Keystone Pipeline agreement with our neighbor and ally Canada. Quite the contrary, Obama seems content with our country being at the mercy of OPEC members who regard the U.S. as an enemy, even if Obama believes he's won them over with his unclenched fist.

Strong voter turnout on Sunday would help give the opposition momentum for a campaign where it hopes to portray Chavez, 57, as a Cold War-era ideologue who has lost focus on day-to-day problems such as crime and unemployment.

I know ... Weird, isn't it?

"I'm not an imperialist. Those are debates from 50 years ago when I wasn't even born," Miranda state governor Capriles recently told reporters, referring to Chavez's epithet for foes.

"This is a debate between stagnation and progress."

Here I was struck by the similarities of the liberal/leftist democrats' (and the media's) constant depiction of conservatives/republicans running in this country's election cycle. Among other scare rhetoric, the race card has been thrown down so many times by these people that it has become so transparent you can see straight through to their lunacy in using it, and the choruses of things like "Jim Crow", in order to obfuscate the real and critical issues. Obama and democrats warn republicans will pull the country back decades away from the progress that they have made. Yeah, that is pretty much the plan. The real progress we need is exactly the same progress Venezuela needs.

Drawing derision from Chavez, the five candidates in the primary have crisscrossed Venezuela, from Andean foothills to Amazon jungle hamlets, attacking his record and promising to stay united behind whoever wins on Sunday.

Well, I hope they are successful at that because our guys have spent more time and energy beating each other to a pulp and barely landing a glove on Obama's failed record ... and I am having a hard time envisioning unity in the GOP at this point of our long campaign.

Read the article in full here.

I hope the Babalu family and community had a wonderful and blessed Christmas. Sorry I have been a bit MIA the last couple weeks, but I had a lot on my plate.

While trying to get back up to speed in the blog and news world this caught my eye over at Ace of Spades HQ It's a long read, but very good. Too bad the MSM won't shine any light on it, however. It's a great piece by Kevin D. Williamson at National Review Online titled "Repo Men", and here is a taste:

For a few measly millions, Wall Street not only bought itself a president, but got the start-up firm of B. H. Obama & Co. LLC to throw a cabinet into the deal, too — on remarkably generous terms. President Obama, for a guy prone to delivering prim and smug little homilies denouncing greed, greed, greed — the only of the seven deadly sins that truly offends Democrats (though Mrs. Obama has done some desultory work on gluttony) — is strangely comfortable among the Gordon Gekkos of this world. Shall we have a partial roll call? Beat the drum slowly and call out the names: With unemployment still topping 9 percent, the catastatic world economy teetering on the brink of another, even larger financial catastrophe, and trillion-dollar U.S. deficits as far as the green-shaded eye can see, let’s hear it for Obama’s first National Economic Council director, Lawrence Summers (of hedge-fund giant D. E. Shaw and venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz), who has had some nice paydays courtesy of Lehman Bros., JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup. Let’s hear it for Citigroup’s Michael Froman, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national-security adviser for international economic affairs, for Hartford Financial’s Neal Wolin, deputy Treasury secretary, for JPMorgan’s William Daley, Obama’s chief of staff, and for his predecessor, Rahm Emanuel of Wasserstein Perella. Let’s hear it for Fannie Mae’s Tom Donilon, national-security adviser. (No, seriously: One of the luminous interstellar geniuses who brought Fannie Mae to its current aphotic state of affairs, upside down to the tune of trillions of dollars, is running national security, and the former director of the White House Military Office, Louis Caldera, was on the board of IndyMac when it finally went toes up — sleep tight, America!) And, lest we forget, let’s have three big, sloppy cheers for economic-transition team leaders Robert Rubin (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup) and folksy tax enthusiast/ghoulish billionaire vulture Warren Buffett.

That’s a pretty fantastic lineup, from Wall Street’s point of view, but the real bonus turned out to be Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who came up through the ranks as part of the bipartisan Robert Rubin–Hank Paulson–Citigroup–Goldman Sachs cabal. Geithner, a government-and-academe man from way back, never really worked on Wall Street, though he once was offered a gig as CEO of Citigroup, which apparently thought he did an outstanding job as chairman of the New York Fed, where one of his main tasks was regulating Citigroup — until it collapsed into the yawning suckhole of its own cavernous ineptitude, at which point Geithner’s main job became shoveling tens of billions of federal dollars into Citigroup, in an ingeniously structured investment that allowed the government to buy a 27 percent share in the bank, for which it paid more than the entire market value of the bank. If you can’t figure out why you’d pay 100-plus percent of a bank’s value for 27 percent of it, then you just don’t understand high finance or high politics.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing when you have the time. It gets even better ... or worse ... however you want to phrase it. Given the MSM's and the democrats' lovefest of the Occupy movement, it sure puts things in perspective outside of that whole "99% vs 1%" facade ... or should I say, farce.

Oh, and just incase I drop off the radar again ... Happy New Year. Deseandote un prospero año nuevo.

Struggling for ideas for that perfect gift this Christmas? This past "Black Friday" gun sales broke the previous sales record by 1/3. (Read the comments at the link and weigh the tone ... and at an MSNBC link, of all places!) "We are the 47%". The last gun sales record was set in late summer-early fall of 2008. I remember that statistic, but I'm trying to recall the significance of 2008... I really cannot, for the life of me, understand the reasoning behind 2008's gun sales surge, or even think of a reason why citizens would lawfully exercise our US Constitutional 2nd Amendment right to own guns ... can you?

The beginning of the week the U.S. Senate passed a bill, National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - Senate Bill 1867, saying the government can detain citizens indefinitely under suspicion of being terrorists. (Imagine if this same Bill had been even considered, let alone passed, under a republican administration or held Senate. Wait ... Why, the vote was a staggering 97-3!)

Republican Senators that did vote for the bill assured there were no worries for American citizens. Yeah, because our US Constitution's 4th Amendment has been protecting us so far against the DHS's outrageous searches at the airport with the TSA. I have yet to hear/see any reports where any terror attempt has been thwarted by these invasions on children, housewives, and our walkered-elderly. But maybe we can all just chill with a DHS snow cone, eh? April 2009 a (then) newly unclassified Department of Homeland Security report outlined additions to the "terror watch list". The document's title: "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment". Included in this report, aside from the obvious according to the title, are our returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans. Yet, we are not permitted to say or even think the identity of this nation's real terrorist enemies.

The MSM is trying to spin and sugar-coat the reasons behind this record-breaking surge in gun sales as it is now somehow cool and socially accepted trendiness to own them ... guns, that is, not Min Pin Chis.

Yeah, right...

The American people aren't stupid and ignorant. The MSM is stupid and ignorant for believing that we are.

I think it pretty much tells you where the nation is right now ... and Gov. Chris Christie has some thoughts on that as well, while confronting a recent OWS heckling (emphisis mine):

Here’s the way I feel about it: They represent an anger in our country that Barack Obama has caused,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “He’s a typical cynical Chicago... politician who runs for office and promises everything and then comes to office and disappoints, and so their anger is rooted not in me or Mitt Romney, their anger is rooted in the fact that they believed in this hope and change garbage.

And they are the ones that are eagerly awaiting the promised fundamental transformation they believe has not come about soon enough. Then there are those of us, we "bitter clingers", that fully understand all of this, and will not be bought-off with DHS snow cones while standing in search queues.

Obama's Razor - In any given situation, the most cynical explanation is usually the correct one with this administration. (HT: comment # 10 @ AoSHQ)

Cross-posted @ CW

I've heard clips of Adam Carolla's radio talk show before, and he is always quite frank and colorful in his pull-no-punches opinionating on subjects. Generally he comes off as a mix of libertarian and conservative. Glenn Beck highlighted this bit of Adam Carolla on an anti-Occupy Wall Street rant, that is really very spot-on ... but be warned there is a graphic language splash zone involved.

It really is a beautiful thing...

Pitbull comments: This absolutely brilliant rant perfectly describes Occupy Wall Street -- and by extension all "progressives" and liberals.

The two strongest things I gather from this brief snips of snipes from Fox-Piven are:

1. Not only is there a growing population of conservative students in our colleges/universities, but they are no longer afraid to voice their opposition

2. Given this is a private Christian college (Messiah College) hosting a very far leftist speaker, does it strike anyone else, the contrast, between how she is allowed to speak openly her views, as opposed to how conservative speakers are treated on other campuses? What does that say about those young adults in factories of higher education who are always the first to scream about "free speech"? It's blindingly apparent in this situation these college students' minds are 'open' to respectfully and politely listen to someone they don't agree with.

Isn't it cute how she uncomfortably struggled to convey her contrived platitudes to a group that obviously didn't agree with her, and by the end was cornered, and even flustered, into backtracking on her false assertions that were strongly countered? You see, Frannie, THESE college kids really are educated.

More thoughts @ HotAir

Excellent commentary in American Thinker titled "Obama and the 3 curses" that gets to the nub of the issue...

Recently, I came across something spooky. Composing a political comment to share with friends, I referenced the putative ancient Chinese curse may you live in interesting times. It's an old saw of unknown provenance and authenticity, but one that has gained enduring currency in the English language and seemed to capture the bitter lesson Americans have learned since falling for Barack Obama's frothy promises of hope and change.

After all, what could be more interesting than watching a young and inexperienced President set out to transform America, empowered by electoral mandate and his party's control of Congress? And President Obama did not disappoint. He boldly borrowed $5 trillion dollars to spend on bailouts and stimulus and government programs on a scale unseen before. He took over health care, auto companies and student loans. He used the power of the purse and an army of regulators flamboyantly, to recast the United States as a socialist country. How exciting to live in these most interesting of times!

And, of course, the promise turned into a curse. We have worse than nothing to show for record government spending and debt. Unemployment is stuck above 9% and we lose jobs "unexpectedly" with monotonous regularity. Gas and food prices are skyrocketing. We've extended jobless benefits into another welfare entitlement and 46 million people are on food stamps, another record. The economy has stalled and teeters on the brink of a disastrous backslide into a recession we never really escaped. And let's not forget America's historic credit downgrade and the waves of foreclosures. In Washington they talk of economic "uncertainty," but across the land there is the unmistakable stench of fear in the air.

Satisfied with my commentary, I decided to look up the Chinese quote to make sure I got the wording right. It turned out that there is no known Chinese language version of the quote, nor a definitive Western source. But what stopped me in my tracks was that this is the first of three apocryphal quotes of increasing severity, like the circles of hell. Whether genuine or not, all three contain nuggets of rueful truth that explain their enduring currency. And to read them today is to experience a shock of recognition - they are the three horsemen of the Barackalypse. [...]

Read on.

Once again Eddie practices "cherry-picking" out of context and loose editing to make his point fit an agenda. If you take the time to listen to a Paul Ryan plan, or more specifically to the full context of Rubio's speech you'll find Marco Rubio was saying the complete opposite of what the MSNBC dolt Schultz was pretending to portend ...

SCHULTZ: Florida Senator Marco Rubio got some good press this week for saving Nancy Reagan from a fall at a Reagan Library event. But when it comes to the rest of the American senior citizens, Rubio wants to leave them high and dry. He's coming up in Psycho Talk. Stay with us.
...

SCHULTZ: And in Psycho Talk tonight, Florida Senator Marco Rubio. He's on the attack against the Big Three. Now Rubio is an early favorite to take the number two spot on the Republican presidential ticket next year thanks to his Tea Party ideology and his pretty boy looks. But his policies are downright ugly.

The reality is that in a few short years, all that we are right now continuing to pay into both Social Security and Medicare will be gone for everyone, especially those seniors the MSM and the left/democrats are right now trying to scare against the republicans trying to save the programs.

Anyhow, Ace of Spades hears an ugly racist "dog-whistle" in Ed Schultz's commentary as if trying to convey a similarity of Sen. Marco Rubio to a notorious Hispanic serial killer ... I think it's more Ace's way of playing Eddie's game by Eddie's rules and spiking the ball in Eddie's fat face. To say bloggers such as Ace are taking the gloves off with the leftist and often times vile MSM would be an understatement. Just glad we're on the same team...

I want to drop Ed Schultz into the catagory of communist "useful idots" ... but I just can't seem to give Eddie that much I.Q. credit.

Here's a real look into the American Dream come true for Sen. Marco Rubio and his American exceptionalism ... and from across the pond, no less. Marco Rubio really is an American Hero in the making.

Remember when your mom told you if you didn't tie your shoes properly you'd trip and fall, and hurt yourself? She was right. So were we...

Norm Podhoretz at the Wall Street Journal: What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president.

[...] In short, the spell that Mr. Obama once cast—a spell so powerful that instead of ridiculing him when he boasted that he would cause "the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal," all of liberaldom fell into a delirious swoon—has now been broken by its traumatic realization that he is neither the "god" Newsweek in all seriousness declared him to be nor even a messianic deliverer.

Hence the question on every lip is—as the title of a much quoted article in the New York Times by Drew Westen of Emory University puts it— "What Happened to Obama?" Attacking from the left, Mr. Westin charges that President Obama has been conciliatory when he should have been aggressively pounding away at all the evildoers on the right.

Of course, unlike Mr. Westen, we villainous conservatives do not see Mr. Obama as conciliatory or as "a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election." On the contrary, we see him as a president who knows all too well what he believes. Furthermore, what Mr. Westen regards as an opportunistic appeal to the center we interpret as a tactic calculated to obfuscate his unshakable strategic objective, which is to turn this country into a European-style social democracy while diminishing the leading role it has played in the world since the end of World War II. The Democrats have persistently denied that these are Mr. Obama's goals, but they have only been able to do so by ignoring or dismissing what Mr. Obama himself, in a rare moment of candor, promised at the tail end of his run for the presidency: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

This statement, coming on top of his association with radicals like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi, definitively revealed to all who were not wilfully blinding themselves that Mr. Obama was a genuine product of the political culture that had its birth among a marginal group of leftists in the early 1960s and that by the end of the decade had spread metastatically to the universities, the mainstream media, the mainline churches, and the entertainment industry. Like their communist ancestors of the 1930s, the leftist radicals of the '60s were convinced that the United States was so rotten that only a revolution could save it.

But whereas the communists had in their delusional vision of the Soviet Union a model of the kind of society that would replace the one they were bent on destroying, the new leftists only knew what they were against: America, or Amerika as they spelled it to suggest its kinship to Nazi Germany. Thanks, however, to the unmasking of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian nightmare, they did not know what they were for. Yet once they had pulled off the incredible feat of taking over the Democratic Party behind the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972, they dropped the vain hope of a revolution, and in the social-democratic system most fully developed in Sweden they found an alternative to American capitalism that had a realistic possibility of being achieved through gradual political reform.

[...]

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

And so it came about that a faithful scion of the political culture of the '60s left is now sitting in the White House and doing everything in his power to effect the fundamental transformation of America to which that culture was dedicated and to which he has pledged his own personal allegiance.

Read in full...

He is what he is... What he was raised to be. What he will always be. What he is trying to transform all of us into.

Bumper sticker photo previously used @ Babalu ... and should be used again in 2012.

Of course, with Gov. Perry tossing his Ten Gallon Hat into the GOP race for the 2012 POTUS ticket, the MSM has to get busy fast on 'deconstructing' the man whose state has led the nation in growing employment (yes, it's "employment", not "unemployment" ... no typo), business growth, and strong economy. Perry might very well become Obama's adversary, and burr under the saddle, in his 2012 attempt to remain in the rent-free White House with all the luxury perks. For all Obama's breast-thumping of success in 'creating' jobs, Texas has the distinction of boasting almost half of any new jobs (and non-government jobs at that) in the nation by not following Obama's grand 'change' plan in regulations, taxes, and policy. Rick Perry can strongly stand toe to toe with Obama on a debate stage and provide a solid record of government getting out of the way and with new manufactoring growth making Texas a welcome environment for companies to relocate and hire Texans to work. Texas is even leading the way in fighting the federal agencies under Obama that would crush existing jobs/industry/employment through ridiculous overreaching restrictions and regulations, while actually cutting government spending in the state. The state also shows one of the strongest population growths in the country. However, apparently the media has no problem with Obama's new jobs claims being minimum wage jobs (see: the McDonald's reference below), and even more government jobs (where those wages come from private sector workers' taxes).

But CNN wants us to know a lot of these jobs just aren't worth all the Perry hype.

Texas has gained more than 1 million net new jobs in the decade Perry has led the state. And it's been going strong since the recession ended.

[...]

But that doesn't mean that all is well with employment in the Lone Star State. Texas leads the nation in minimum-wage jobs, and many positions don't offer health benefits. Also, steep budget cuts are expected to result in the loss of more than 100,000 jobs.

Perhaps most importantly, Texas can't create jobs fast enough to keep up with its rapidly growing population. Since 2007, the state's number of working-age residents expanded by 6.6%, nearly twice the national average.

Factoring in that population growth means Texas would need to create another 629,000 jobs, or 5.6% more positions, just to reach its pre-recession employment level, according to the Economic Policy Institute. [...]

Not in so many words, I guess CNN believes the jobs are the scale of 'burger-flippers'. Funny, I distinctly recall during the George W. Bush administration when unemployment was barely above 5% (right at the rate it was when Clinton ran for a second term on it as a good thing ... gawd, I loves the interwebs) the democrat talking-heads (one in particular I heard on CNN was James Carville, former Clinton administration wonk) chastised Bush's low unemployment rate as negative and mostly such 'burger-flippers' and 'underemployed'. However, a couple months ago the Obama administration and media sycophants couldn't wait to credit Obama for burger giant McDonald's massive new job hirings as somehow attributed to Obama's policies finally paying off and turning the economy around for job growth.

During the Bush 5.+% unemployment administration the same complainers bemoaned a lot of those employed were under-educated (no college) as well. Given the unemployment rate right now tickling close to 10% (and much higher if you get down to rating it to the standards the way the dems and media did for Bush) a college degree/education isn't helping very much.

Even in that bastion of knowing what is best for the unwashed in this nation, Washington D.C. boasts a 50.1% unemployment rate for teens. African-Americans are carrying a lot of the current unemployment rate on their backs, and it's eroding the African-American middle class ... a voting base Obama and the democrats strongly target. The Hispanic unemployment rate is not much better ... another strong democrat voting block. And apparently illegal aliens are also hardest hit (another strong democrat voting--- well, you know). Not to be left out there are those over-educated white males and others. The same negative prospects loom for women.

The Texas economy isn't perfect, but it is one of the best in the nation. (Keep an eye on democrat/union traumatized Wisconsin too) Whether or not you like Gov. Rick Perry, or if he will even end up getting the nomination to head the GOP 2012 ticket for POTUS, it cannot be overlooked that of all the candidates debating for the chance to challenge Obama for the White House, the Texas governor is possibly one of the only ones that can blow the man out of the water with a positive and growing record of success in job and business growth in the territory he has been in charge of for ten years. For Obama to make such a claim in a debate against Gov. Perry he would, at the very least, have to lean on Texas as nearly 50% of his alleged success ... and that dog just won't hunt.

So, even if Gov. Rick Perry isn't quite your final pick to lead the GOP to victory over Obama, let's just take former Gov. Sarah Palin's advice...

“I’m of the mind of ABO — Anybody But Obama, at this time.”

Cross-posted @ Chandler's Watch

John "F-ing" Kerry demands the MSM stop giving equal voice to the TEA Party and opposition to Obama's agenda...

Um, censorship, anyone?

What I find even more disturbing not one person sitting on that MSNBC panel of the Morning Joe program challenged him.

Glenn Beck and Co. analyzes it ...

HT: Glenn Beck

Think he would have made a good POTUS? Huh??? A chill wind...

Duck because leftist/liberal heads are about to explode, and you don't want to get any of it on you ...

John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death - according to the tragic Beatles star's last personal assistant.

Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon's death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.

In new documentary Beatles Stories, Seaman tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky Lennon wasn't the peace-loving militant fans thought he was while he was his assistant.

He says, "John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.

"He'd met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event... Reagan was the guy who had ordered the National Guard, I believe, to go after the young (peace) demonstrators in Berkeley, so I think that John maybe forgot about that... He did express support for Reagan, which shocked me.

"I also saw John embark in some really brutal arguments with my uncle, who's an old-time communist... He enjoyed really provoking my uncle... Maybe he was being provocative... but it was pretty obvious to me he had moved away from his earlier radicalism.

"He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he'd been when he wrote Imagine. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy's naivete."

Imagine that ...

Lennon and Reagan were at this Monday Night Football game December of 1974.

In a bit of Instant Karma, John Lennon was shot (assassinated) December 1980, and Pres. Reagan was shot in an assassination attempt in March 1981.

[...] In six wild months during 1980 and 1981, assassins took aim at the pop star, the president, and the pope. It seemed like the chaotic 1960s all over again, save for the fact that its symbol had been gunned down. [...]

His musical comeback owed as much to the comeback of his personal life as it had to his renewed focus on rock 'n' roll to the exclusion of politics and drugs. Politics, Lennon concluded, had "almost ruined" his music. "It became journalism and not poetry. And I basically feel that I'm a poet -- [...]

He came to regret the early 1970s politicization of his art. "That radicalism was phony, really, because it was out of guilt," Lennon recalled a few months before his assassination. "I'd always felt guilty that I made money, so I had to give it away or lose it. I don't mean I was a hypocrite. When I believe, I believe right down to the roots. But being a chameleon, I became whoever I was with. When you stop and think: what the hell was I doing fighting with the American government just because Jerry Rubin couldn't get what he always wanted -- a nice cushy job?"

"Politics plays hell with your poetry," revolutionary John Reed once concluded. Before he died on December 8, 1980, musical revolutionary John Lennon learned that lesson, too.

The Heritage Foundation has put together and just-released an expanded 2011 Budget Chart Book on America's fiscal nightmare. It ain't pretty.

Just as ugly are the charts on the rise in structural unemployment.

In a classic CYA move a former Obama advisor assures, “We’re doing OK” without a budget. Huh?!?!? Really??? Yeah, this is why the Congress and the administration cannot even begin to tackle this monstrosity. They are still trying to insist the debt ceiling must be raised, as if they don't already disregard it in their gluttonous spending of money that isn't there, and isn't theirs to begin with. They have no limits. It's the negative policies by this administration, such as the NLRB's thugging for the unions in the right to work states of the south, an aggressive anti-domestic energy campaign, and an abomination of a healthcare law that will be putting several million middle class people on Medicare under ObamaCare, that are dragging us under water. We are looking for economic growth on a gravely ill patient while hoping it doesn't flat-line as the team of surgeons stand on the air hose.

As usual, the current advisors to Obama claim cutting spending isn't the answer. No, the only cure for this increasing blockbuster disaster is to increase taxes (but they use that buffer term "Revenue Increases" so as not to say "taxes" ... you know how it is, control the message control the masses).

The American people are being forced to make cutbacks within their own lives and budgets. We have had to revamp the way we think and spend. We are doing all the heavy-lifting ... while the Congress and the asministration sit back and tell us we need to be lifting and carrying more?? We are just bumps in the road.

Finally, it's being reported that Obama managed to draw some laughter last night from DNC donors as he made the claim of having created some 2.1 million private sector jobs. Some are now claiming the 'laughter' was actually applause, and the notation on the transcript was some sort of editing error.

I am not sure which reaction would be worse, considering the created jobs claim is a complete farce, and 2.5 million jobs have been lost since Obama took over. Apparently the only people dealing with reality in this fiction of horror and deception are the American people who are having an impossible time making their budgets balance ... without the option of raising their debt ceilings. Hell, we're all just trying to keep a roof over our heads.

By the way, I heard on FOX this afternoon that last night Obama attended his 30th fundraiser to date for his re-election campaign. It was also mentioned that at this time during his first term Pres. George W. Bush had done three. And don't get me started on the golf numbers ... Perhaps if Obama would take as much time and energy to work on this nation's joblessness and the piss-poor economy as he does golfing, campaigning, and striving to raise $1 billion to get re-elected to save his job, the house he and his family live in rent-free, and have the taxpayer buy his groceries and gasoline for their endless parties and trips, he just might get re-elected. But from the looks of it this just might historically become one of the most expensive and costly losses in presidential history ... for us, as well as Obama.

Cross-posted @ CW

Texas Gov. Rick Perry not sounding like he's not running at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans.

Dave In Texas @ Ace of Spades grabs a "Check List" from the video:

"This administration in Washington clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need but it's the most qualified to make essential decision in every area.. " It's arrogant. Check.

"EPA, killing jobs in Louisiana. They think they know best. I disagree." Check.

Gray hair that I recall seeing a month or so ago. Gone. Check.

"Bail out money for businesses 'too big to fail'. Bad" Check.

Points to the future, and ponders our present actions. Check.

"Revive the American dream". Check.

And now the Texas story. Job creation. 47.8% of all jobs created in the nation in the last 2 years. Total check. Balanced budget. Check check.

My source is telling me he's running. We shall see ...

A few years ago I was informed you will find lots of conservatives working in Hollywood. They're either "in the closet", or working in that wide zone out of camera range. But we are seeing more and more come out of said closet. Your actors are a minority, yes, but when it comes down to it, while actors are the face and voice of Hollywood, directors, producers, and writers are the brains. As the saying goes, "There are no small parts. Only small actors."

I recently learned movie producer (Pirates of the Caribbean movies, National Treasure movies, Black Hawk Down, Remember the Titans) and one of TV's biggest producers, Jerry Bruckheimer (the CSI:shows, Cold Case, Amazing Race, any number of other highly rated/successful crime dramas) is a conservative...

Currently writer David Mamet is making the conservative talk rounds to discuss his new book laying out his conversion to conservatism. He's been interviewed on Glenn Beck's radio program, and on Limbaugh's...

And has also given a great interview to Slate (not a conservative publication in any sense), in which Mamet discusses his feelings about how this country is selling-out Israel, conservative common sense on economics, and how he is "crazy about Sarah Palin"...

What does he [Mamet] think of Barack Obama? “The question is can he run on his record in 2012 and the answer is no, because it’s abysmal. He took a trillion dollars and where it went, nobody knows. He dismantled health care, he weakened America around the world, he sold out the state of Israel. All he’s got to run on is being a Democrat and indicting the other fellow.”

So who would he prefer as president? He replies that he is “not current” with the Republican contenders until I mention Sarah Palin. “I am crazy about her,” he answers immediately. “Would she make a good candidate for president? I don’t know but she seems to have succeeded at everything she put her hand to.”

And if you missed it down the Babalu page, Ziva caught another great piece on Hollywood producer Lionel Chetwynd's scathing criticisms about the industry’s ideological bigotry.

Everyone knows what castro's idea of May Day is - tanks, turbas, thugs and long, long, long speeches about dictatorship of the proletariat and yanqui imperialismo. It's hard to mess up a holiday to the extent he has.

But over in Chile, a nation that in 1973 escaped castro's grasp, fought him off and kicked out his 40,000 goons --err, 'trainers' -- before he could create a second slave state (he tried), May Day has a different meaning: worker empowerment.

What happened there 30 years ago today is something that looks like a small thing that turns out wasn't such a small thing.

Chile swapped its castroite food ration books for La Libreta pension savings books - which are full of money. José Piñera shows what one looks like.

May 1 marks the 30th anniversary of the world's first pension privatization. It took Chile's bankrupt Social Security system and turned it into a system of personal retirement accounts. Investor's Business Daily in 'Chile's Private Social Security System Turns 30' describes why Chile's pension reform succeeded and why it can work here, too.

By privatizing pensions, Chileans liberated themselves not only from castro, whose calling card was murder - even of his obedient pawn, Salvador Allende - but from Otto von Bismarck, too.

Chile had a Social Security system exactly like ours that was borrowed from the Prussians in 1925. (Ours came in 1935). These Bismarckian set-ups, where a younger group of workers pays the retirement of an older group of workers, sound good in theory but they always goes bankrupt. That's because of demographics - more workers taking benefits than paying them in. On top of this, all kinds of special interests are grabbing at the money coming in - which is why our 'trust fund' is bankrupt. Well, Chile had the same thing in 1980.

But unlike us, Chile privatized and changed its fate forever. On Nov. 4, 1980, the same day the great Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. president, Chile passed a law saying pensions would go private. Had we done that too on that date, we'd all be taking home something like $55,000 Social Security pensions instead of $18,000 pensions (see IBD link above) we get now.

The system's architect, Labor and Social Security Secretary José Piñera specifically chose May 1 for the implementation to change the meaning of the holiday. Instead of a nasty castrofest, May 1 became a day of real dignity for workers.

Chile maybe didn't know so at the time, but it was enacting the biggest de-castro-ing agent ever invented. Nobel-prize-winning economist Gary Becker said as much. Money was yanked out of the greedy, grasping hand of big government and put into individual accounts where workers make all their own choices - what to save, how to invest, when to retire.

And by a law embedded in the 1980 constitution by Pinera himself - no government can ever lay a hand on these accounts. Result: workers started to care about the entire economic fate of the country because it affects their pensions, instead of what they could extract as special interests from the government. A culture of property and personal responsibility took root.

That's toxic to the likes of castro and all the new waves of pawns he's got out there claiming redistribution is the answer.

Meanwhile, Chile's accumulated savings soon came to equal 100% of GNP and as savings built all that extra cash went on to develop the country. That's why Chile is a nice place to live - it didn't happen out of nothing. It now looks and feels just like California during its better days except with highway signs in Spanish ... and the country has NO NET DEBT. Eat your heart out, bearded beast!

Here a selection of pieces published on the occasion of Reagan's centennial. Feel free to add links to other tributes in the comments.

• Official Reagan Centennial Page
• Michelle Malkin has a great page up with the Gipper's own words
• The Classical Virtues of Ronald Reagan (from the Heritage Foundation);
• Revealing Reagan’s true legacy (from the Washington Times);
• Reagan Reclaimed (Superb analysis in NRO by Steven F. Hayward. The libs will hate this piece -- reason enough to read it!);
• Reagan Revealed (Deroy Murdock in NRO);
• Liberal Bouquets for Dead Conservatives (Jonah Goldberg in NRO);
• Ronald Reagan: A Relaxing View (William F. Buckley in NR, writing in 1967);
• Ronald W. Reagan (Jim Hanson in Big Peace).

Click the link below for the tributes written by our contributors:

• A Leader like few others by George Moneo
• Guayaberas Blancas by Val Prieto
• Ronnie Reagan: A Legacy of Love and Devotion by Maggie (DrillANWR)
• Spoiled by Alberto de la Cruz
• A Gift by Ziva Sahl
• Idealist AND Ideologue by Henry Gomez
• A Slobbering Love Affair — Cuban Americans and Ronald Reagan by Humberto Fontova

* * *

A Leader like few others
by George Moneo

In my musings I often use the phrase, "the greatest President of my lifetime" when speaking of Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States. It's not meant as hyperbole in the least; it is a rare thing to be inspired by a great leader. I know what it must have been like for those men and women who heard Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Lincoln, Churchill, Patton. For eight years -- plus four if you start the countdown clock in 1976 at the RNC Convention -- Reagan was an inspiration to me an so many others. He was a leader with a capital "L".  He pushed us to be great, to be everything the promise of America had to give us. He didn't need little buttons with pithy slogans on them; he didn't put on airs and talk to us in sweaters; he didn't have to bite his lip to pretend to show empathy; he didn't need logos. He spoke directly to us, the American people. He was always telling us that the greatness of our country was us, not the government. And we responded with two landslide victories at the polls.

He was a man of principles, yet pragmatic when he had to be. But he never wavered on his core beliefs. He said what he meant when he reformed our tax code; when he called the Soviet Union "an evil empire"; when he fired the PATCO strikers; when he invaded Grenada; when he asked Gorbachev to "tear down the wall"; when he proceeded with the Strategic Defense Initiative despite the hysterical, cowardly baying of the left; when he walked out of an arms treaty negotiation with Mikael Gorbachev to the dismay of the still-baying liberal intelligentsia and media; when he unapologetically helped and supported anti-communists all over the world; when he proselytized Constitutionalism as a goal of his administration. That is leadership. He didn't need a push poll to know what the American people wanted. He knew us because he was one of us.

Reagan wasn't perfect. I wish a variety of international issues had been handled differently. He didn't deal with Iran after the Marine Corps barrack suicide bombing of 1983; this act of war (among so many, many others) was linked to Iran through its proxies in Lebanon. Reagan should have taken decisive and devastating action against this infectious pustule that threatens the West to this day with its Islamic fascist Jihad. The Iran-Contra scandal, an outgrowth of the very same weak middle-east foreign policy that was woefully unaware of the nature of the enemy we faced (and still face), was an unnecessary detour and distraction, and has unnecessarily sullied his reputation. He didn't do enough to dislodge the beast ninety miles away. On the domestic front, Reagan did not forcefully put a stop to the rapid explosion of Federal "departments" that have taken over traditional state and local activities.

It is a badge of honor that in his day Ronald Reagan was reviled, insulted, libeled and slandered by the left, belching out a wicked hatred for the man that, in recent memory, has been enthusiastically reserved only for George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. It speaks volumes that the left has to use the adjective "Reaganesque" to describe their woefully inadequate "leaders," while at the same time lying about who Reagan was to get a twisted and perverted message across.

We will continue to tell the truth about this great man to those who will listen. His leadership, his optimism, his humility, is sorely missed. For giving me the privilege to experience first-hand what greatness in a leader is, I am eternally grateful. Thank you President Reagan, and God bless you.

* * *

Guayaberas Blancas
By Val Prieto

I was going to my grandparents house as I did everyday during high school to take them their hot off the press copy of El Diario de las Americas, the newspaper I delivered back then. I remember there being way too much traffic around their house. Some streets were cordoned off and there were motorcycle cops everywhere. There were alot of cars moving through the usually quiet street of their apartment building. I wasn't sure what was going on.

I pulled into my parking space at their building - it was the one parking space for their apartment but abuelo wouldn't let anyone else park there, family or not, if he was expecting me. It was my space. I picked up their copy of the paper and knocked on the door. My grandfather's voice came through with his usual "Who is it, you or your brother?" A quick "My brother" from me would always get me in the door.

As usual my cafe was ready for me on the kitchen table. I handed my grandfather his sports section and abuela here society page, sat down at the table and relaxed for a minute. I drank my cafecito.

"There's alot of traffic out there today" I remember saying. "Must be an accident or something. The streets are all closed."

"Bah! It's the President's visit. Pero que te pasa a ti muchacho?" My grandfather looked at me almost stunned that I had no idea the President of the United States was going to be less than two blocks from his apartment. I had completely forgotten even though it was the front page headline of the very newspaper I'd been delivering.

Of course I felt like an idiot. Abuelo had been watching the mortorcade when I had arrived.

I dont remember who's idea it was, but the next thing I know my grandfather is splashing on his English Leather and donning his white long sleeve Guayabera. We were going to see the President.

We walked the two or so blocks from his apartment to La Esquina de Tejas, the restaurant where President Reagan was to visit. I don't remember exactly what my grandfather and I talked about on that walk but I'm sure Abuelo tossed a few tidbits of knowledge my way as he always did.

The restaurant was a well known place for us. It was across the street from the clinic where as a boy I had to go for my daily shots to battle anemia. It was my grandfather who'd walk me there, teaching me about baseball or talking about our family or telling me jokes. After the shot we'd cross the street, he would order his cortadito from the cafeteria window of the restaurant. He'd always buy me a pack of gum or the violet candies I used to like. The very same restaurant where the President would be eating was ours in a way. We had a history there.

The day President Reagan went to La Esquina de Tejas, the day where he later said "Cuba si, Castro no" in a speech, that very day was one where I would take one of my last walks with my grandfather.

We stood in the parking lot across the other street from the restaurant and waited for the President. There were alot of people there. Abuelo stood there calmly, smelling like a gentleman and wearing his finely pressed white long sleeve guayabera. He held his paragua - umbrella - open above him to block the sun while I clamored about the crowd in search of a better view. When the President's motorcade arrived Abuelo and I looked at each other as if to say He's here, are you paying attention? with our eyes.

A few minutes later out from the limo came President Ronald Reagan, the most powerful man in the world and leader of the free world. He turned and waved at the crowd, at us, and we cheered. Abuelo just stood there as before, a smile beaming from his face.

There at our little corner, at the little cafeteria where Abuelo had consoled me every day for a year after my shots, at the very same little spot where we would ultimately end our day no matter where we had traveled, there stood the President of the United States in a white, long sleeve, finely pressed guayabera.

I wonder if he, too, smelled of English Leather.

(Published here, back in 2004.)

* * *

Ronnie Reagan: A Legacy of Love and Devotion
by Maggie (DrillANWR).

I figured everyone would be climbing the monolith Ronald W. Reagan today. And I'm in just as much awe as everyone else over the legacy of Ronaldus Maximus the politician, the diplomat, the speechifier, the world leader, the Soviet crusher. But I also like to remember Reagan as "Ronnie".

In an age of text messaging and social networking in limited characters I think we've lost that fine art of communicating with pen and paper, heart and soul. Above me on my desk I have a small square sticky note my husband left for me one morning. I glance up at it throughout the busy day and smile (and no, I won't tell you what it says). A few years ago some of the many letters Ronald Reagan wrote to his beloved wife Nancy Reagan were published in a book. It was a side of the man we really never even considered amid all his staunch resolve and rugged stature. But it was there ... a legacy of love for her:

My Darling Wife

This note is to warn you of a diabolical plot entered into by some of our so called friends - (ha!) calendar makers and even our own children. These and others would have you believe we've been married 20 years.

20 minutes maybe - but never 20 years. In the first place it is a known fact that a human cannot sustain the high level of happiness I feel for more than a few minutes - and my happiness keeps increasing.

I will confess to one puzzlement but I'm sure it is just some trick perpetrated by our friends - (Ha again!) I can't remember ever being without you and I know I was born more than 20 mins ago.

Oh well - that isn't important. The important thing is I don't want to be without you for the next 20 years, or 40, or however many there are. I've gotten very used to being happy and I love you very much indeed.

Your Husband of 20 something or other.

We all know the mental isolation President Reagan spent the last part of his life in. And we know his wife Nancy was forever devoted to being beside him to the lonely end. I imagine, in those long hours of fog and clouds she spent with Ronnie, Nancy treasured as priceless those pages and pages of her husband's thoughts, words, emotion, and silliness. It's as if he had been prescient, knowing he would need them to communicate to her everyday how much she had meant to him in this life, and continued to. Even then he was able to romance the woman, just as he continues to inspire us today. It is a legacy of love, loyalty and devotion, even during the worst of times, we can all learn from both Ronnie and Nancy Reagan.

* * *

Spoiled
by Alberto de la Cruz

Ronald Wilson Reagan was elected President of the United States right around the time I entered high school and had become politically aware. Before then, the only political conversations I had participated in consisted of making fun of the toothy little peanut farmer with the perpetual stupid look on his face that occupied the White House. Ronald Reagan brought about my political awakening, and gave me a gift few Americans throughout history can boast about; living in America during one of the greatest presidencies of all time.

As an impressionable teenager, Reagan showed me what it meant to be an American. He gave me the same hope and inspiration that founded this great country, and he made me proud to have been born here. It was his patriotism and love for America that reached out to every citizen, and no matter how pernicious the attacks against him, they felt comforted by the fact that they knew their president would do whatever was necessary to protect our country and our way of life.

In a way, spending eight of my early years with Reagan as president spoiled me for the rest of my life. No president since him has ever come remotely close to this greatness, and I am afraid to say that it may be decades before another one comes along. Nevertheless, I am happy and proud to be able to tell my children and my future grandchildren that I lived in this great country when it was under the leadership of one of the greatest presidents of all time.

Few Americans can say that, and I thank the good Lord I am one of those Americans.

* * *

A Gift
by Ziva Sahl

Like many baby boomers, the president of my childhood was Eisenhower. He quietly guided our great nation through a time of unprecedented prosperity, optimism; and security; at least that was my perception. I grew up as a proud patriotic American, with an unfailing belief in America’s manifest destiny.

That nationalistic self-assurance ended on November 22, 1963, and with finality six weeks later when my Father suddenly passed away.

In retrospect, it seems overnight, all was gone. Prosperity was replaced by struggle; optimism was replaced by an introspective confusion fashioned by the chaos of social change. The 1960s, celebrated by the MSM as a decade of joyful, youthful rebellion, was in fact an era of frightening violence and upheaval perpetuated by radicals that ended civility in our country -- I hated it.

The 1960s dissolved into the 1970s with further decline. Newly married, I was happily immersed in the joys of domestic life and other than writing a letter of support to President Nixon after his 1970 Cambodia speech, didn’t pay much attention to politics.

Years went by, Ford, Carter, well, I did take notice of Carter, as his blatant bungling, and insipid self-righteousness, had me reaching for the remote whenever he appeared on television.

As a native Californian, I always liked Ronald Reagan; he often appeared on Los Angeles television, and hosted one of my favorite shows, Death Valley Days. Even so, in 1980, I was confused and shocked when my mother, a lifelong democrat proudly voted for him. I was even more surprised when she continued that support into his second term; not since her misguided support of JFK had she been so excited about a politician. That confusion ended on a busy day, June 12, 1987. I was at home working, ignoring the audio coming from the TV in the other room, until I heard these words:

In the 1950s Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health; even want of the most basic kind -- too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

Wow, what a reminder of whom we are and what we stand for. It was sucker punch, striking at my core, and rekindling patriotism left unstirred since those dark days of grief nearly a quarter century earlier. By the end of the speech, ending with the famous, “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev -- Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” I was in tears...what a gift President Reagan gave to us all, the purpose of being American.

Only the greatest of leaders are able to beneficently inspire a nation with words that resonant individually. How blessed we are to have had the leadership of President Ronald Reagan, the father of modern conservatism. His legacy is our nation's hope for redemption.

* * *

Idealist AND Ideologue
by Henry Gomez

Almost exactly three years ago I created this video and posted to YouTube.

It was in response to the groundswell of support for Barack Obama that included celebrities making songs from his speeches. I was taken aback by how people became so captivated by Obama's rhetoric though it seemed obvious to me that it was empty and deceitful. Here's what I wrote at the time:

It takes more than a pretty video and a bunch of celebrities singing to make a great president. It takes a person who understands where the true greatness of America lies.

Long before anyone ever heard of Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan challenged Americans to hope, to dream, to believe....

In themselves.

He brought change. He told us "yes we can". Except he also told us we didn't need government to do it. He inspired us with his words and his actions. He showed us that our individual liberty and creativity is what makes our country great not any government program.

Today, Americans are wowed by the empty oratory of politicians who promise nothing but failed socialism in disguise. Even the presumptive Republican nominee cloaks himself in the mantle of Reagan but has shown that he doesn't understand Reagan's philosophy.

Reagan was an idealist AND an ideologue. His policies were based in his rock solid conservative ideology. That doesn't mean he never compromised. But compromise is something different than standing on the same side of an issue with those who are supposed to be your political adversaries.

John McCain is no Ronald Reagan.

* * *

A Slobbering Love Affair — Cuban Americans and Ronald Reagan
by Humberto Fontova

Cuban-Americans gave Ronald Reagan 90 per cent of their vote. No other American ethnic group approached this level of devotion. Even “southern whites,” America’s most reliably Republican voting bloc, fell short of this “Hispanic” group’s support for The Gipper. A visit to Miami’s Cuban Memorial Cemetery might help explain the phenomenon.

You'll often find people with itchy noses and red-rimmed eyes ambling amidst these long rows of white crosses. It's a mini-Arlington cemetery of sorts, in honor of Castro and Che's murder victims and those who—utterly without allies—fought and fell trying to free Cuba from these proxies for an Evil Empire. Twenty-five years later President Ronald Reagan would insure that any such fighters in Central America had an ally in the U.S. Worse still (in liberal eyes) he unashamedly defended the Nicaraguan Contras as “freedom-fighters.” The tombs and crosses in the Cuban Memorial are mostly symbolic. Most of the bodies still lie in mass graves dug by bulldozers on the orders of a man Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern called, “very shy and sensitive, a man I regard as a friend."

Never heard of this Cuban Memorial in the mainstream media? Well, it honors the tens of thousands of Fidel Castro's and Che Guevara's victims. Need I say more about the media blackout?...I didn't think so.

Some of these Cuban Memorial visitors will be kneeling, others walking slowly, looking for a name. You remember a similar scene from the opening frames of "Saving Private Ryan." Many clutch rosaries. Many of the ladies will be pressing their faces into the breast of a relative who drove them there, a relative who wraps his arms around her spastically heaving shoulders.

Try as he might not to cry himself, he usually finds that the sobs wracking his mother, grandmother or aunt are contagious. Yet he's often too young to remember the young face of his martyred father, grandfather, uncle, cousin –or even aunt, mother grandmother-- the name they just recognized on the white cross.

"Fusilado” (firing squad execution) it says below the name-- one word, but for most visitors one loaded with traumatizing flashbacks.

On Christmas Eve 1961, Juana Diaz spat in the face of the Castroite executioners who were binding and gagging her. They'd found her guilty of feeding and hiding "bandits." (Che’s term for Cuban peasants who took up arms to fight his theft of their land to create Stalinist kolkhozes.) Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba's Kulaks had guns—at first anyway. Then the Kennedy-Khrushchev pact left them defenseless against Soviet tanks, helicopters and flame-throwers. When the blast from Castro’s firing squad demolished Juana Diaz’ face and torso, she was six months pregnant.

In Aug. 7, 1961, Lydia Perez was eight months pregnant and a political prisoner of the man Andrea Mitchell describes as, “old-fashioned, courtly–even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” Lydia somehow annoyed a guard who bashed her to the ground, kicked her in the stomach, and walked off. Both Lydia and her baby were left to bleed to death.

Rigoberto Hernandez was 17 when Che Guevara’s soldiers dragged him from his jail cell, jerked his head back to gag him and started dragging him to the stake. Little “Rigo” pleaded his innocence to the very bloody end. But his pleas were garbled and difficult to understand. His struggles while being gagged and bound to the stake were also awkward. The boy had been a janitor in a Havana high school and was mentally retarded. His single mother had pleaded his case with hysterical sobs. She had begged, beseeched and finally proven to his “prosecutors” that it was a case of mistaken identity. Her only son, a boy in such a condition, couldn’t possibly have been “a CIA agent planting bombs.”

“Fuego!” and the firing squad volley riddled Rigo’s little bent body as he moaned and struggled awkwardly against his bounds, blindfold and gag.

“Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail!” sneered Che Guevara.

Carlos Machado was 15 years old in 1963 when the bullets from the firing squad shattered his body. His twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley. All had resisted Castro and Che’s theft of their humble family farm.

According to the scholars and researchers at the Cuba Archive, the Castro regime’s total death toll—from torture, prison beatings, firing squads, machine gunning of escapees, drownings, etc.—approaches 100,000. Cuba's population in 1960 was 6.4 million. According to the human rights group Freedom House, 500,000 Cubans (young and old, male and female) have passed through Castro's prison and forced-labor camps. This puts Castro and Che's political incarceration rate right up there with their hero Stalin's.

Resulting omelet?

The Castro brothers and Che Guevara converted a nation with a higher per capita income than half the nations of Europe, the lowest inflation rate in the Western hemisphere, a larger middle class than Switzerland, a huge influx of immigrants and the 13th lowest infant-mortality in the world, into one that repels Haitians.

Having lived it, to Americans of Cuban heritage Communism means—not free healthcare, not universal education, not overzealous social workers and community organizers—but pure Evil.

Ronald Reagan understood.

Had Ronald Reagan been U.S. President in 1960, no Cuban Memorial would be needed in south Florida today. And some obscure and long-dead Latin criminals named Fidel Castro and Che Guevara would merit less textbook space than Pancho Villa.

* * *