A Tale of Two Cruises…

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Because they’ve been so-o-o-o-o much better off since Obama/Kerry lifted that evil US embargo on Castros’ Cuba paradise is just washing them out to sea, dontcha know…

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A “Legends of Pittsburgh Cruise” ship rescued 16 Cuban migrants who were found on a makeshift raft in the Gulf of Mexico Saturday afternoon.

Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison posted pictures on Instagram, showing the ships. His agent Bill Parise told KDKA that he snapped the pictures from his estate room.

[…]

Harrison also tweeted: “We just stopped for this boat with 16 people in the middle of the ocean. Waiting for coast guard…” he said. “16ppl, wild!!! @ Gulf of Mexico.”

[…]

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports the US Coast Guard in Miami, which said that it was not involved in any rescue effort, made clear that Mr. Harrison was merely a photographer, played no role in the rescue and would likely not mingle with the migrants.

“There was a football player that was aboard the cruise ship who took some really good photos, but he wasn’t involved in the actual rescue. The Carnival cruise ship would never allow a passenger to engage with the migrants,” Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios said today.

He added that the migrants will be dropped off at immigration at the ship’s next port of call, which is Cozumel, Mexico. […]

Let’s see how long before Obama/Kerry sends them back to Fiddy and Raul.
Perhaps Barry can just take them back himself on his big upcoming visit to the Castro compound…

RFK Jr. Throws Dead Kennedys Under the Obama-Cuba Bus

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The title of the piece is “We have so much to learn from Cuba”.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opens his latest op-ed, this one regarding the Obama administration’s diplomacy-warming of a U.S.-Cuba relationship by embargo change, by putting blame on two of his own relatives…

In early December, President Barack Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than five decades of a misguided policy which my uncle, John F. Kennedy, and my father, Robert F. Kennedy, had been responsible for enforcing after the U.S. embargo against the country was first implemented in October 1960 by the Eisenhower administration.

RFK Jr., I guess, thinks shaking his head and finger at his father and uncle, AND pointing out his privileged visit to the island, solidifies his views that the embargo is broken and must be scrapped, or something. He manages to basically scold the Castro regime for being bad communists.

However, his belief is the U.S. embargo was behind the Cuban government’s reasoning and justification for treating Cuba’s people like starving prisoners and keeping the country’s economy down. Yeah, we made them do it.

It is almost beyond irony that the very same politicians who argued that we should punish Castro for curtailing human rights and mistreating prisoners in Cuban jails elsewhere contend that the United States is justified in mistreating our own prisoners in Cuban jails.

Imagine a U.S. president faced, as Castro was, with over 400 assassination attempts, thousands of episodes of foreign-sponsored sabotage directed at our nation’s people, factories and bridges, a foreign-sponsored invasion and fifty years of economic warfare that has effectively deprived our citizens of basic necessities and strangled our economy.

No, what’s ironic, Bobby Jr., is the conspiracy theory of Castro’s alleged involvement in your POTUS Uncle JFK’s assassination. But, eh…

The Cuban leadership has pointed to the embargo with abundant justification as the reason for economic deprivation in Cuba.

The embargo allows the regime to portray the United States as a bully and itself as the personification of courage, standing up to threats, intimidation and economic warfare by history’s greatest military superpower.

It perpetually reminds the proud Cuban people that our powerful nation, which has staged invasions of their island and plotted for decades to assassinate their leaders and sabotaged their industry, continues an aggressive campaign to ruin their economy.

Yeah, he said that. The same-old same-old claptrap that has been heard for years. Sort of flies in the face(s) of half a century of countless Cubans climbing into dangerous, leaky rafts to sail deadly shark-infested waters to get here to the great Satan … Doesn’t it?

Oh, and I found this one priceless…

Unlike other Caribbean islands where poverty means starvation, all Cubans receive a monthly food ration book that provides for their basic necessities.

But you read and judge.

A week ago A.J. Delgado wrote, “Arguing with idiots about #Cuba”, where she counters many of the anti-embargo talking points liberals, such as RFK Jr., are constantly regurgitating. The fact is Barack Obama’s new age plan for changing diplomacy with Cuba is yet another one of his foreign policy decisions granting trust where trust is not deserved … and is already evident.

Cuban-American Actress Dies at 55…

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Elizabeth Peña has passed away at 55. At 5’2″ the pint-sized beauty was a powerhouse on the screen and stage for 40 years, helping open the door for more Hispanic actors/actresses to follow. Makes sense, with her parents’ background. The above photograph is a still from her scene in Andy Garcia’s “The Lost City” where her Communist ‘revolutionary’ character is insisting to Garcia’s night club-owning character how/why the saxophone is no longer allowed to be played in Castro’s Communist Cuba.

Here is a bit of her biography…

(IMDb Bio) – Her love for the arts came naturally, as her father was a well-known playwright, actor, director and novelist, so its not hard to understand that by the time she was eight, Cuban-American Elizabeth Pena already had designs to become an actress. Born in New Jersey and raised in New York, her parents, who opened off-Broadway’s “Latin American Theatre Ensemble”, were more than encouraging. Elizabeth attended NY’s “High School of the Performing Arts” and found occasional work in repertory theatre and in television commercials. Her film debut in the independent Spanish-speaking feature, El Super (1979), started her on a long line of feisty, rebellious characters that showed plenty of attitude. During the early 80s, she played everything, from a knife-threatening waitress to a disco queen, as she waited for her big break. That big break came in the form of the hugely successful comedy film, Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), co-starring Bette Midler, Richard Dreyfuss and Nick Nolte, in which she stole many scenes as the sultry, politically-minded maid, “Carmen”, who lusts for Nolte. This propelled her to move to Los Angeles, where she continued to spice up both the big and small screen, including the part of Ritchie Valens’ stepsister-in-law, in the well-received biopic, La Bamba (1987). Honors also came by Elizabeth’s way, when she received the “Independent Spirit” and “Bravo” awards for the film, Lone Star (1996), and the “ALMA Award” for Tortilla Soup (2001). On TV, she hasn’t found the one series role to thrust her front and center. Co-starring roles in Tough Cookies (1986), I Married Dora (1987) and Shannon’s Deal (1990) were short-lived. She is married and has two children … (on her refusal to portray Latin stereotypes) There are a lot of jobs I’ve turned down because they wanted me to play what I call “Miss Cuchifrito” types.

(The Hollywood Reporter) – Her nephew, writer Mario-Francisco Robles of the website Latino Review, shared the news in an obituary on the site. He said Pena died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She died of natural causes after a brief illness.

[…]

Pena broke into sitcom territory decades earlier when she toplined I Married Dora for ABC. The series ran for one season from 1987-88 and centered on a couple with a green-card marriage.

She also stood out as postal clerk Jezzie, who lives with a hallucinatory Tim Robbins, in the Adrian Lyne horror film Jacob’s Ladder (1990).

[…]

I worked very hard to get Jacob’s Ladder,” she said in a 2001 interview. “At first they wanted Julia Roberts, Andie MacDowell or Michelle Pfeiffer. At some point they wanted Susan Sarandon, and Madonna wanted the part. They auditioned all of them. I begged to be auditioned. I begged and begged and when I auditioned, the chemistry was right and Adrian and I were just taken with each other. I auditioned for six months, twice a week. The reason I kept going back was because Adrian was literally fighting for me to get the role.”

In Paul Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Pena played the live-in maid who made out in her room with Richard Dreyfuss, and in Brett Ratner‘s Rush Hour (1998), she was LAPD bomb diffusion expert Tania Johnson opposite partner Chris Tucker.

Pena also recurred on the 2000-02 Showtime drama Resurrection Blvd. as family matriarch Bibi Corrales. She went on to direct an episode of the series, as well as episodes of Nickelodeon’s The Brothers Garcia, becoming the fourth Latina ever to join the Director’s Guild of America.

She also provided the voice of Mirage, the right-hand woman of bad guy Syndrome (Jason Lee), in Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004).

In La Bamba (1987), she played Rosie Morales, the sister-in-law of rock ’n’ roll icon Ritchie Valens, (Lou Diamond Phillips), and on Matador, she played the mother of Tony “Matador” Bravo (Gabriel Luna).

[…]

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The Hollywood Reporter article mentions that shortly after she was born in New Jersey her parents moved the family back to Cuba until she was about eight or nine years-old, and then they moved back to the U.S. to New York City. I do not know what her politics and views on Castro and Cuba were, but I did enjoy her work. Please add to the comments section if readers have any more info on her. Thanks. Variety Latino has a beautiful spread on her career with more photographs.

HT: Danny Pino @ Twitter

Staged: The World of Ricky and Lucy

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I saw this on Hollywood Babylon’s Facebook page and had to share it. Isn’t it so cool to see the stage lay-out of the “I Love Lucy Show”? What iconic TV pioneers and geniuses they were.

Captioned as follows…

Looking down on all the interior sets of the I LOVE LUCY show on the soundstage at DESILU Hollywood studios in the 50’s!

Bedroom (complete with separate beds), living room, kitchen and Ricky Ricardo’s CLUB BABALOO (formerly the TROPICANA CLUB)! Not sure of the room on the left end, but could it be “Little Ricky’s” bedroom?

You can even see the first few rows of the audience bleachers at the bottom of the picture!

At first I thought this photo was of the real set, but wasn’t sure. Posted it on the PHOTOS OF LOS ANGELES group and a comment was posted within minutes saying it was in fact, a scale model of the actual stage. Of course, I should have realized this. Where is all the stage lighting overhead? And the audience bleachers don’t exactly look like wood or steel benches!

DUH!

Still VERY cool, and, perhaps even a bit cooler that it is a model, with all the attention to detail! Wild how they crammed all of Lucy, Ricky, Ethel and Fred’s lives onto a single stage!

And that is Little Ricky’s bedroom. Oh, and is that supposed to be Ricky and Lucy inside the heart on the crib’s bumper pad behind the baby (1:39)?

If this is true, I ponder where Fred’s and Ethel’s living room was because they did have times when they ran scenes there.

Reds Return to Red Square on May Day 2014

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MOSCOW – Tens of thousands of Russians marched through Red Square on Thursday as part of May Day celebrations in the first such display of Soviet-era-like ceremony since 1991 – the year the communist Soviet Union dissolved.

“For the first time, stages will be filled, and 5,000 (labor) veterans will stand on the tribunes of Red Square,” Sergei Chernov, chairman of the Moscow Labor Union Federation, was quoted by ITAR-Tass as saying, ahead of the march, which is being seen as part of President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to stoke patriotic feelings following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

As many as 2 million people were expected to be on hand for the event organized by Russian labor unions, which are mostly loyal to the Kremlin. In the end, about 100,000 people participated in the celebration, some holding signs saying: “Let’s go to Crimea for vacation” and “Putin is right.” Russian flags fluttered through the crowd.

Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, whose City Hall approved the measure, led the procession.

Earlier, he assured people it would not be a return to Soviet times…

Well, THAT’S a relief!

Meanwhile, on this not-a-return-to-Soviet-times May Day in Ukraine…

Pro-Russian protesters storm prosecutor’s office in Ukraine’s Donetsk

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Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: A Sense of Humor

This is my “Tweet of The Week”.

It was national ‘Wear Red Day’ to raise awareness for heart disease…

Love this woman!

HT: Twitchy

From the North Coast: A PSA for You Southern Snowmen/women

Ugh! This stuff has gone viral, like a nasty flu bug through a pre-school classroom. It appears people in the south, who are not all that familiar with the physics and the properties of snow/ice/water are falling for the “fake”/”plastic” snow hoax on the internet. Lots of videos like this are being uploaded onto YouTube, uh-huh…

I put together a bit of an explanation (and an even more important message at the end) for the alleged lack of melting and the blackening and odor of the snow these people are claiming is not real snow. It’s a little long, but it is one of those times when you actually use that information you sleepily yawned about to your lab partner in a high school science class that would be worthless and never used later in life. Enjoy…

To The Point: “I think ‘normalizing’ relations has a lot more to do with Cuba…”

I share this mostly because of an email exchange I had just last night with a friend who lives in San Fransisco. A few days ago my SF friend had sent out a group email with info on how you could help those who were dealing with the contaminated water in West Virginia. She fowarded to me one of the personal responses to her email from one of her more liberal contacts:

“… I just returned from a 12 day trip from Cuba and saw first hand the effects of what a US embargo has on the people of this nation.”

Yeah, my friend thought I would get a kick out of that one too.

Cuban-American actor Danny Pino showed up on Fox and Friends this morning to discuss tomorrow night’s Law and Order: SVU episode (NBC, 1/15 – 9:00pm ET) where the storyline will revolve around Pino’s character Det. Nick Amaro. Pino credits his brother, an actual Miami police officer, who inspires him and gives him helpful technical guidance. Near the end of the interview (@ 3:30) Brian Kilmead asked Danny Pino about his views on the U.S. and Cuba “normalizing” relations…

In August Danny Pino wrote a beautiful memoriam of his beloved Abuela Cuca, who had recently passed.

Really Bad Revisionist History in Pictures

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History in Pictures @ History In Pix on Twitter posts “historic” photos daily on their account. The problem is, they either got caught in a photoshop scam, or crafted one themselves as they offered the above photo yesterday. (The tweet looks to have since been removed from their account.)

It was a photoshop, as Nickarama @ Weasel Zippers uncovered through a Beatles expert.

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It’s John Lennon and friend Wayne Gabriel.

A huge hat-tip to Nickarama @ WZ.

By the way, this selfie by Abe Lincoln is for real. He took it before leaving for the theater…

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When Every Second Counts

A fascinating look at just a second from every day out of a year that we would typically throw down the memory hole in the whole contest of just one day, let alone 365…

From The Blaze:

Three hundred sixty-five seconds. It’s amazing how just one second a year adds up and can give a glimpse into someone’s life.

That’s all Matt Skuta gave us as a look into his past year. But it’s enough to show us, as the Daily Dot put it, “that even in a year without major, life-changing moments for us, even the most mundane seconds have meaning.”

Holiday Programming Note: CBS to Run Classic “I Love Lucy” Episodes

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CBS is offering quite a holiday treat this Friday evening. Two classic “I Love Lucy” episodes will run back to back, with an interesting twist. They have been “colorized with a vintage look” (pre-airing reactions to this from “Lucy” purists are mixed). One is the “I Love Lucy Christmas Show” (1956), and the other is “Lucy’s Italian Movie” episode (1956) with the famous grape-stomping scene.

Check your local listings for the time in your area to view … or set your DVRs so you don’t miss it or want to watch it again!

From the “I Love Lucy” Facebook page:

Mark your calendars to see Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel in full, vibrant color. This Friday, Dec. 20 at 8pm ET/PT, CBS is airing I Love Lucy Colorized Christmas special featuring two of the iconic show’s most popular episodes. You won’t want to miss it!

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