Gusano

My islands

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I was lucky to be born on an island paradise. A few months later, my luck ran out when paradise was lost.

Before long, it was obvious that the island was spiraling down into a red abyss. Most of my childhood memories revolve around the struggle to survive the repression, scarcity and fear that living on my island entailed.

My family had decided to leave the island early on. That decision caused serious rifts within the family and also caused my father to lose his job. Tough Times. Soon afterward, the United States broke relations with the island, and we were stuck. Stuck in what had become an island prison run by a death cult with its own catchy slogan: “Patria o Muerte.”

Everything on the island revolved around the cult leader. And every edict or law seemed designed to humiliate, torture and subjugate the inmates into submission. Every day was worse than the day before. They were building “The New Man” (by force, of course).

Finally, after years of trying, we were able to leave via the Freedom Flights.

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Triggers

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Ever hear of the expression hair trigger? How about Hat Trigger?

It seems everyone is triggered lately. Everything is a trigger in buttercup land. It’s all the rage.

I’m not one to ignore trends. I like to think of myself as a man of his time. Hell, if I had hair I’d consider a man-bun.

So I finally felt like I joined the 21st century. I got triggered.

Right there in my own library/den/tv room/man cave/safe space. It happened!

There I was… in front of the screen… in the zone… digesting all of the day’s outrages… letting them all sink in, slowly… just trying to empathize with these poor devastated triggered folks… and Bam!

There’s Hillary Clinton at Yale’s graduation and the buildup was that she took a hilariously funny jab at president Trump and the Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election. The “joke” was that she pretended to put on a Russian hat while whining about losing the election.

And that was the trigger. A hat. Hilarious.

It wasn’t a Russian Hat. It was a Soviet Hat, complete with a hammer and a sickle. Now that must be funny. Everyone was in stitches. It was so funny it made headlines. So clever!


Imagine if the hat’s insignia had been Swastika instead? Or if it had been a baseball cap with a Confederate flag? I would imagine instead of laughter and cackles we would have had screams of horror and tears and melting Ivy League snowflakes stampeding towards the nearest safe space. Maybe not; hypocrisy has no limits anymore.

I saw red. I hate red. I hate the hammer and the sickle. They are the symbols of slavery and tyranny and death. Just like a Swastika. The Hammer and the Sickle has killed over 100,000,000 human beings since this Godless ideology took hold in 1917.

When Mrs. Clinton took out this hat, she wasn’t mocking Mr. Trump, she mocked those 100,000,000 who died and the many hundreds of millions of victims of communism.

How funny.

We’re doomed.

A Babalu PSA: Rabies Alert

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Ted Cruz Declares His Candidacy for President
Ted Cruz Declares His Candidacy for President

So finally the Miami Herald mentioned Ted Cruz’s presidential candidacy in the main page of their online edition.(!)

(I wouldn’t know about the print edition because I confess I haven’t looked at that fish wrap since April of 2000.)

And it goes something like this:

A Cuban, a Canadian, a white supremacist and a Chihuahua with rabies walk into a bar and the bartender says: “What will it be, Mr. Cruz?” … Then, he turns around and tells all the white trash in the bar to run for the hills.

It came in the form of a cautionary opinion hit piece by Andres  Oppenheimer warning Republicans, because you see, the well being of the Republican party is his primary concern, bless his heart, that if you sleep with dogs , you wake up with fleas. As we all know, it’s in the Miami Herald’s rich journalistic tradition to look out for the Republican party and to denigrate Cubans using canine metaphors.

Here’s the money quote: (emphasis mine)

The Canadian-born son of a Cuban father and a U.S.-born mother, Cruz — a first-term Republican senator from Texas — is one of the most rabid critics of President Obama’s executive action to regularize the legal status of up to 5 million undocumented immigrants, most of them Hispanic.

So, how does this newspaper stuff work anyway? Does the Herald call Oppenheimer and ask him to write an opinion piece on Cruz because he’s Latino Hispanic a Spic and Oppenheimer is also a Latino Hispanic a Spic and he can get away with saying he’s “rabid” without the risk of being called racist? Or is it that Cruz’s candidacy isn’t important enough to get an opinion hit piece by a real opinion journalist?

I mean there are so many more pressing issues going on for this niche Latino Hispanic  Spic commentator to expound upon. There’s the food shortages and long lines for essentials in Venezuela, the anti-government demonstration and unrest in Brazil,  the scandalous and suspicious  suicide  murder government hit of Alberto Misman in his own birthplace, Argentina, lots of stuff. But…I guess warning the Republican Party about evils that can befall it by associating with such a “rabid” Cuban-American trumps all these very Latino issues.

Oh well, like they say…you can’t teach an old dog new tricks…

Here’s my cautionary opinion hit piece: If you’re Cuban, please don’t buy the Miami Herald. If you need to wrap your fish or line your bird cage that badly, do it with one of those free real estate magazine things they give way at Publix. Or ask for paper and not plastic and use cartucho, por favor.

If a Cuban American announces he’s running for President of THE United States of America, does it make a noise?

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So…  if a Cuban American announces he’s running for President of THE United States of America, does it make a noise?

I heard a rumor, well…. not really, I read it on Drudge, yesterday, that some Cuban-American dude was announcing he was running for president…

….Wow! that should make a noise? No? the first Lateeeh…noo  Presidential candidate for POTUS!

Well, yeah, like he’s a Republican, but his last name is Cruz. I mean…..

He’s a Cuban-American, Lateeeh…noo,no?

It should  all over news in the very the Mecca of Cubandom, South Florida, where 1.2 Million Cuban –Americans reside , right?  don’t you think?

Well, think again.

Not a single solitary  pixel on the internet  ”Front Page”  of the Miami Herald or “The Sun Sentinnel”… Crickets…Grillos…

Interesting…..

But, It’s really the first Chihuahua Presidential Candidate …. not really newsworthy at all in the hometown newspapers of  1.2 Million Cuban – Americans.

Nothing too see here…move along.

So what’s going to happen if and when Rubio announces?

What if it turns out to be a Rubio/Cruz ticket? or a Cruz/Rubio ticket? Will it ever make the news?

Talk about expiration dates! These two biased liberal rags are decomposed…

Hopelessnes And Change For The Worse

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I haven’t been paying too much attention to current events these past few weeks. Frankly, The Obama administration’s decision to “normalize” relations with Cuba left me with the desire to crawl into a cave with a few bottles and hibernate.

So as I start to come out of my temporary exile in the blissful cave of ignorance, I am confronted by the sobering news from the land of my permanent exile as I come across a story about the arrests of Cuban dissidents who were attempting to participate in #yotambienexijo this past Monday.

And the story in UK’s The Guardian had a picture of twenty-nine Cuban dissidents meeting in Yoani Sanchez’s 14ymedio offices.

Twenty-nine..29?!

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Twenty-nine brave disciples of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr…and Sisyphus.

That made me feel good.

For a second.

You see, these Democracy activists look pretty good for folks that just got thrown under the bus of fellow traveler Barack Obama.

And…if you know anything of how things work in the island of despair, at least three of the activists in this photograph are state security informants, if not security officers. But all are slaves.

So for the foreseeable future, since the Obama administration has decided to sanction  56 years of oppressive hopelessness and stagnation  in the name of hope and change, the only pressure that the sociopathic tyrannical [c]astros have on them to change their evil ways will come from whatever futile acts of civil disobedience these pacifists are allowed to carry out. Because as we see from this article, the [c]astros control everything through intimidation and violence by choosing who and when gets to push the boulder up the mountain just to see it roll back down again.

I miss my cave.

Shark Food

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We’ve all seen the mess that our government has created in the southern border.

A porous border, inadequate immigration laws and an administration that plays fast and loose with the thruth and  rule of law are a recipe for disaster.

Most of us who search for the truth have learned to rely on the alternative media for our news because the mainstream media has become the press agents for the leftover left.

So you go to Drudge a few times a day to get your fair share of the news and you come across:

RPDrdge1

 

And you read.

And you’re shocked at the inhumanity.

And the words bounce off the empty part of your soul where your country used to be.

And you think…

… my brothers, my family, my flesh and blood have been shark food since 1961. Everyday…

… and you never saw a headline…

Cuban Noise

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We’ve all heard the usual philosophical way to question the subjective nature of reality: “If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it still make a noise?” and we’ve all shrugged our shoulders and said “Who cares?”

So, If a Cuban screams in a crowded room, does he make a noise? After the 21 hour speech in the Senate from Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, I’m staring to wonder. Does anyone hear or care?

I don’t know if there is some kind of karmic whammy or Santeria curse or twilight zone thing going on, but it seems to me that when a Cuban talks about the dangers of oppression, tyranny and the loss of personal freedom at the hands of an autocratic government, he or she doesn’t make a sound, no one listens, his words are dismissed, discounted, disdained…

Even when the majority agrees with what the Cuban is saying, they look at him as he’s a rabble rousing, self promoting drama queen who should know his place and shut the hell up. Now. Even a State Senator from Cruz’s home state was treated with more respect when she filibustered in defense of infanticide.

It’s just amazing.

I could go on a write about all the reasons why Senator Cruz is right about the Affordable Care Act. I could go on to write about how unusual and refreshing it is to see a politician stand on principle. I could go on and on about how it’s even more refreshing to see a friggin elected official do what he told those who voted for him he was going to do, come hell or high water. I could go on to say how all Senator Cruz is warning Americans not to make the same mistakes that Cubans and many others made in the past. I could, but other than getting it off my chest, it wouldn’t do any good…as Ted Cruz is about to find out.

No one will listen. Ok, maybe Glenn Beck, but hey. He’s been known to listen to Fontova.(que tipo mas descarao, caray)

Anyway, I’m proud of Senator Cruz. I’m glad his Cuban dad instilled in him the sense of duty and love of freedom and the American way.

And so the re-run to that awful movie we Cubans have already seen begins in 6 days.

Once that movie starts it will keep running until the projector breaks …

Son of “Putinisim”

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Before I go to sleep at night, I usually get on the phone and check texts, e-mails , social media and blogs. (don’t judge me, as Marta would say) Late last night on Facebook, as I went through all my invitations to play Candycrush and Farmsville, I saw a blurb that made me do as quick a double-take as when I see one of those witty George Tekai posts.

It was a link to the Mary Anastasia O’Grady article in the WSJ that Alberto posted this morning:Cuba Studies ‘Putinismo’ for Survival Tips.

“Putinismo” funny word for a Cuban…loosely translated to “whorinism,” thus the late night double-take. It was too late too click and read so I just put the phone on the charger.

And as I tried to drift off to sleep, I thought about Cuba’s “putinismo.” Yep, it’s “putinismo” alright. Pimp [f]idel over the last 54 years has prostituted our future, our country and our people. The whole place is an obscene shrine to “putinismo.”

Our country was pimped out to the Russians; our men pimped out to fight and die in meaningless proxy wars fought in far-away third world crapholes that weren’t worth fighting for.

Doctors and nurses, pimped out to work in third world countries and in places where local doctor refuse to work.

Our women and children pimped out to foreigners for a meal or a bar of soap.

A whole people has had to prostitute their dignity in order to survive in an undignified and corrupt society.

“Putinismo, “ alright. Putinistic exeptionalism.

But then, I read O’Grady’s article only to learn that “putinism” is more about all the soldiers in the [c]astro mafia studying Vladimir Putin’s KGB model of how to take over a country. Not what I thought at all. “Putinismo” is something totally different.

And I keep reading this awesome island on the net and I come across Maggie’s post on Jay Nordlinger’s review of “Una Noche.” This guy Nordlinger, bless him, is such a friend to the Cuban people. He doesn’t have to write about Cuba, but always manages to shine a light on Cuba’s reality.

As Nordlinger talks about the movie, he quotes a Cuban-American on life in Cuba:

“It takes a martyr-level courage to live even as a decent human being in Cuba. Not to be on a block committee. Not to spy or inform on your neighbors. Not to lie or steal. Not to sell your body or buy somebody else’s.”

And I’m back to my original conception of what “putinismo” means…

O’Grady claims that Atunez coined the term. Given his martyr-level courage, intellect and eloquence, I’m assuming he meant the double entendre of “putinismo.”

I’m still not sure if “putinismo” means for me . It could mean the prostitution of our country or it could refer the Putin mafia methods being studied by the officers in the FAR in order  to prevent the island’s control from falling into the hand of one of the [c]astro spawn…or in other words… “hijoeputinismo.”

Back to Farmville..

 

Seeing Red

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I’m seeing red these days.

I’ve seen red up close. And I hate red.

Red took over my island home way back in the day when Red was called the “Soviets.” Now that they can’t afford to control Eastern Europe at gunpoint anymore and have had to retreat back behind their frigid borders, they’re just called Russians.

They’re a truly exceptional people these Soviets Russians. They excel at brutality, oppression and conquest…and drinking. Form 1917 on, their chief export and contribution to humanity was exporting lies, hate and misery throughout the world. They succeeded in taking the incoherent thoughts of a failed, class envious “philosopher” and spinning them into a Godless system responsible for the deaths of 100,000,000…and counting. Truly exceptional! But, hey! That was back when they were Soviets, now they’re just plain Russians…totally different.
With the help of their equally exceptional opportunistic disciple, [f]idel, the Soviets Russians brought their exceptionalism to my home where they roamed around in hideous green trucks that looked like Tonka trucks from Hades, like they owned the place (because they did). They bankrolled their bearded puppet so that he could oppress, starve and torture us Cubans into submission. They put a big red, nuclear bull’s eye right on top of my home town out of spite and hate. They bankrolled our suffering and we paid them back in blood in places like the Congo and Angola…and the Florida Straights.

And, why?  Because they were in a “struggle,” (the reds love that freaking word, struggle), against an idea. That idea, did not come from a smelly slob of a “philosopher” who sponged off his family and friends all his life. It came from The Creator. It’s the idea of free will; freedom. And they recoil from that idea like a demon from holy water, the Soviets Russians do.  That idea  is the shining light on the city that the man who once called the Soviets Russians an Evil Empire was referring too. And it is that idea of God given freedom and equality that they were struggling against. Imagine that.

And now one of these Soviets Russians has me seeing red. Vladimir Putin Soviet Russian president for life and  ex KGB thug wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, the Grey Red Lady, decrying American Exeptionalism … still “struggling” against the exceptional idea of The Creator. Ironically his dismissive missive was published in the pre eminent newspaper of the very same country he’s criticizing which is … exceptional. Anti –Putin criticism, even sophomoric satire is not permitted in the Soviet Union Russia just ask the members of Pussy Riot or Konstantin Altunin.

American exeptionalism is not like the imperious, Godless, nationalistic  Soviet Russian “exceptionalism” I experienced in Cuba. It’s about an idea, a sacred idea, enshrined in a 237 year old document that created a nation which took the responsibility and sacrifice to keep that idea alive and shine the light of free will and self determination to the rest of humanity. Now, that’s a struggle.

Americans, of course, are not perfect. Exercising free will and democracy can get messy. Sometimes we elect ourselves leaders who think they are the embodiment of American Exceptionalism and that makes it easy for would be Soviets Russians emperors to poke fun at us. But that’s ok, sometimes we get it right. What’s important is that there are 314 Million of us who are not nationalistic or jingoistic or even think we’re better than anyone else. There’s 314million of us who feel is our obligation and our God given right to protect an idea. Soviet Russian presidents for life can’t understand this because all they understand is the brutality and autocracy inherent in their zero-sum nationalistic world view.
Okay… now I’m seeing Red, White and Blue.

God Bless America.

Too Close To Home

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With its balmy, tropical climate, warm sandy beaches and swaying palms, South Florida has become the next best thing to Cuba for Cuban exiles. It’s the closest place to home here in the continental United States.

But, sometimes it can get a bit too close to home for my taste.

Up in Palm Beach County, they have a Sheriff. His name is Ric Bradshaw and he came up with a million dollar idea. His Orwellian brainstorm is to set up a program that would encourage the good citizens of Palm Beach County to report to the PBSO any “suspicious” activity or conversations that their neighbors may be partaking in. Such neighborly intervention could make “sure law enforcement knows about potential powder kegs before tragedies occur.”

His money quote- one that recently got him a featured link on the “Drudge Report”:

“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him. What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’ “

And…get this…the Sunshine Stasi State is giving Sherriff Bradshaw a million of our tax dollars so he can set up his creepy snitch network. The good Sherriff is going to use money to set up

“prevention intervention” units featuring specially trained deputies, mental health professionals and caseworkers. The teams will respond to citizen phone calls to a 24-hour hotline with a knock on the door and a referral to services, if needed.

Sherriff Bradshaw boasts that his program is “the first of its kind in the nation”. Thank goodness because we are…were(?) a free country.

The program, however, is not the first of its kind in the world. It is not new under the Sun. And that is why this hits a bit too close to home. In Cuba, they a have a similar “program” it’s the CDR, Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. The CDR’s mission, in essence, isn’t that much more different than Sheriff Bradshaw’s plan. It involves citizens spying on each other and reporting to the authorities. It’s the main tool used by the Cuban regime to oppress its citizens. It spreads dread, fear and terror.

So, in The People’s Republic of Palm Beach County, if your nosy yellow dog Democrat neighbor hears you cursing out President Obama because you think he’s a lying sack of Marxist excrement because he lied to the Nation about Benghazi as you and your best friend put your AR-15’s into the trunk of your car to go target practice at the gun range, for example, your neighbor can call Sheriff Bradshaw’s “prevention intervention unit’s” 24/7 hotline so they can come knock on your door the next day…and ask you :  “Hey, is everything OK?” Then they can take you in to evaluate your hatred of government and confiscate your AR-15 for your own good, just to be sure…

Maybe next year Joe Negron, R-Stuart, who helped push through the funding will push through another million or two so Bradshaw can set up “prevention intervention” homes on every block that will be tasked with coordinating and compiling intelligence on the neighbors so if they ever do anything unusual…knock, knock… Or hell, set up “clubs” in schools where children are reminded it’s their civic and patriotic duty to inform officials if their parents or other family members are potential threats…again knock, knock…

I remember a few of those “friendly” knocks on the door from [c]astro’s “prevention intervention units” growing up.

Sherriff Bradshaw’s program doesn’t technically criminalize dissent, but it can be abused as an effective method to control, put the fear of the authorities and intimidate ordinary citizens into docility and submission just like the Cuban CDR’s. It creates a first in the nation precedent where citizens who have a healthy distaste of tyranny and love of personal liberty can be singled out and ostracized as “not normal” or anti social or anti-American worse yet, mentally unstable. (that means they take your guns away)

This too, is not new under the Sun and it’s being ingrained into our children to create the next generation of conforming, unquestioning, docile sheeple. And those that do question authority are ridiculed and out casted.

Here’s an excerpt from President Obama’s commencement speech the graduating class of Ohio State University:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.

There’s nothing to see here…move along…don’t ask questions…and do anything suspicious…Oh sorry, I’ll have to finish this post another time…someone’s knocking on my door….

Boston Bombing Fallout

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In the two weeks plus after the Boston Marathon bombings, we have learned quite a bit about the terrorists and their family. One scandalous fact is that these cretins had received welfare benefits.

  Imagine that, immigrants that are welcomed into the best country on earth, provided with security and an education and even public assistance, repay it by attacking it. Someting so absurd that it  prompted president Obama to ask “…why did young men who grew up and studied here, as art of our communities and our country, resort to such violence? (perhaps he should just ask that “guy from the neighborhood,” Bill Ayres, but that’s another post…) 

Others are saying never mind they were on welfare , why are we letting these people in the country in the first place? In fact, in the minds of some, the Boston Bombings have negatively impacted the chances of bi-partisan immigration reform.

 The murderous religious fanatics that perpetrated these crimes were here because, like us Cubans, they had been granted political asylum. Like me and many of you, they were refugees which entitled them to all the rights and privileges bestowed on those lucky enough to be American citizens.

 Before this, there had been little if any talk of incorporating major changes to the asylum process into immigration reform. In fact, the proposed tweaks to asylum seekers  would have made it easier for them.

 But now,  people, like Bill O’Rielly and Charles Krauthammer, are asking how it can be that a person who is allowed to settle in the United States because they are being politically persecuted in their country, can return to said country to vacation, invest, attend cultural events or even “schooling” without any repercussions. Such was the case with the dead bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev who returned to Russia where he was allegedly under danger of persecution because he was an Islamic ethnic Chechen.

 And that’s a hell of a question. Specially when you’re granted refugee status from a country that’s on the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, who trains and harbors terrorists, engages in and traffics espionage,conducts cyber and economic  attacks and  even once urged the USSR to attack the US with nuclear weapons: Cuba.

 The risks of refugees returning to Cuba being “radicalized” and trained to harm the United States are the same, if not greater, than any other group. The Cuban regime aggressively recruits sympathizers, agents and even uses blackmail and hostage taking to advance its cause and sphere of influence.

 Now that the United States’ political asylum policy has become part of the immigration reform debate, it’s only logical some legislators will begin to question the legitimacy of  some refugees and reach the conclusion that if a person  who was granted political asylum can return to the country where they claim they were in danger without any consequences, they did not deserve to be granted “political refugee” status and are just common immigrants who must follow the same immigration rules as everybody else.

The fallout from those bombs that went off in Boston may very well hit Miami soon…

Notes From Left Field

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ordonez1113

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone – the sun came out today! We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field. It’s the first day of spring-when a young man’s fancy turns to…beisbol.

I’m no young man, but my thoughts did turn to beisbol and Cuba today. Yes, beisbol; Cuba’s passion and yes, the beisbol that was invented by the Taino Indians  Native Americans in Cuba. Don’t believe me? Too bad, prove me wrong. It can’t be proven that some American named Doubleday invented it or that some other Yanqui named Cartwright did either. So i’m giving the original inhabitants of Cuba credit.  This is the internet where anybody can say whatever they like without any proof whatsoever. So there.

And, if you don’t believe that you can claim anything as fact on the internet and at reputable media sites for that matter, head on over to the Huffington Post and read this little gem of willful fabrications on the recent trip that Rey Ordóñez, former Mets Shortstop,  took to his homeland, Cuba, the first since his “defection” in 1993.

The point of the fact-challenged post is that the six pictures of Ordóñez in Cuba totally rebut the pro emabargo position “that it helps prop up a communist dictator.”

The Beisbol tall tale begins with the title: Cuba Travel: Baseball Star Rey Ordonez Allowed To Return Home Thanks To Obama Travel Policies. Really? It continues:

 Throughout the following decades, Ordóñez traveled across America playing for the New York Mets, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Chicago Cubs, but never made it back to Cuba because U.S. laws banned his return. This week, Ordóñez took advantage of the Cuba travel policy enacted in January and finally returned to Havana, where he was given a hero’s welcome.

That statement is as absurd as it is wrong. Cuban- Americans have been allowed to visit their relatives in Cuba under Clinton, Bush and Obama. If Ordóñez, pictured above becoming a US Citizen, hadn’t returned to Cuba until now, it’s because either he didn’t want to or because his former owners would not let the slave return to his former plantation.

And yes, Ordóñez like all Cubans was a slave, he had to “defect,” scape his masters by jumping over a fence in Buffalo. He was not free to come play Beisbol in the States, like Beckham was when he came over to play Soccer in LA or when Denis Rodman came to Earth to play basketball from whatever planet he’s from. But the HP doesn’t concern itself with this gross violation of his human rights. They, of course, act as if an athlete having to “defect” to get as much as he can for his God-given talents is totally normal. You see Ordóñez homesickness was caused by hardline evil hearted conservative exiles like Marco Rubio and had to be remedied by Obama’s  all knowing and emcopassing compassion:

Ordóñez owes his trip to an Obama Administration policy, much criticized by Marco Rubio, allowing so-called people-to-people trips to Cuba. Though the process of going to Cuba is still extremely complicated, it is now possible for savvy travelers and homesick ballplayers.

What a crock of crap!

As a matter of fact, it was the [c]astro regime that decided in all its magnanimity to allow the former defectors who were once branded traitors and “vende patrias” (country sellers) to return. And return they did, back to the plantation, jumping through all the hoops their former masters laid out, smiling, taking pictures, giving interviews and paying through the nose. That’s their business. But it wasn’t Obama’s doing.

There was a change in the in travel policy in January of this year as the HP post claims, but it was made by [r]aúl [c]astro, not Obama. Maybe HP got [c]astro and Obama confused. I guess that’s ok since I do the same thing sometimes.