Oh, the fascinating life of the shameless. Or, as Cubans would say, “los descara’os”
Here at Babalu we delight in following the escapades of the Castro Royal Family and all of its vassals and lackeys. One of the Royal Family’s staunchest supporters in Washington D.C. is U.S. Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), a hyper-descara’o who was censured by his peers for engaging in several shady enterprises and corrupt deals.
Well, Charlie is not taking his censure lightly. Following the code of conduct of all descara’os, he is now suing John Boehner and the House of Representatives for wrongful censure, or something like that.
These human beings tend to live charmed lives, or so it seems. They float above the rest of us, getting away with murder — even getting re-elected with an 85-point margin after being caught red-handed with their hands in the till.
They sleep peacefully, secure in their superhuman status. And they love to laugh at us, too. And… funny thing…. all of these descara’os seem to form strong friendships with one another.
Rep. Rangel sues Boehner to overturn House censure
WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel is suing Speaker John Boehner and six other lawmakers, alleging problems with the House ethics investigation that led to his censure in 2010.
In a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, the New York Democrat alleges “numerous, flagrant, knowing and intentional violations” of his due process rights.
Rangel, 82, seeks to overturn the censure and says in the court papers that he suffers “irreparable harm that cannot be compensated by money damages.”
Rangel’s office referred questions to his attorney, Jay Goldberg, who did not return a phone call seeking comment.
The lawsuit names Boehner; Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who was chairwoman of the House ethics committee at the time of the censure; and other committee members and staff. The congressman alleges that evidence was withheld by the committee staff.
Oh, YES! We all are guilty of having laughed our asses off at this sweet, young, clueless woman 6 years ago. But she is having the last laugh today, she is. Somebody on FOX News Channel needs to find this gal and interview her about her prescient ways…
The Czech Republic and Chechnya are nearly 2,000 miles apart, but that didn’t stop people from mixing up their geography.
The Boston Marathon bombing suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers, are of Chechen ethnicity. When the similar sounding Czech Republic, a country in Central Europe, began getting buzz online, the country’s ambassador to the United States stepped in to clear up the social media confusion.
“The Czech Republic is trending because idiots are confusing it with Chechnya. If you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry, cry,” Chris Jones, a writer for Esquire and back-page columnist for ESPN The Magazine tweeted.
“As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect,” Ambassador Petr Gandalovi? wrote in a statement.
“The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation,” he said.
So you see, the massive force of police, FBI, Homeland Security, tanks and military were looking for THESE two radical and murderous brothers…
They are calling it a loan, but we all know what it really is: A generous gift. Saudi Arabia has decided to extend a $30-million loan to the Castro dictatorship in Cuba for what they are calling a public works program to rehabilitate the water system in Havana.
The Castro dictatorship’s history, however, clearly shows they never pay back loans and no doubt the Saudis are quite aware of this history. So they have either decided to gift $30 million to Cuba’s criminal regime, or they got suckered big time.
As the say, a fool and his money are soon parted…
Via the Castro regime’s propaganda news service Prensa Latina*:
Cuba Receives New Loan from the Saudi Fund for Development
Havana, Apr 22 (Prensa Latina) Cuba and the Saudi Fund for Development signed an agreement today by which the island will receive a new loan for $ 30 million dollars, aimed at financing a project to rehabilitate the water system in Havana. The document was signed in Havana by the Finance Minister of Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Assaf and Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca.
Since 2010 another project has been running to benefit the health sector, said the Cuban minister and expressed satisfaction with the visit of Al-Assaf.
The visionary liberal land of political and social perfection.
President Obama is not happy — and he isn’t alone.
You know the place.
The Liberal Utopia is a land where gun background checks prevent mass murder.
The Liberal Utopia is a land where Islamic fundamentalists have changed their perception of America because the President travels to Muslim nations to give lovely speeches, believes that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere is a wonderful sign of an Arab Spring, and refuses to use the word “terrorist” whether his administration is investigating Ft. Hood, Boston, or Benghazi.
The Liberal Utopia is a land where a 2009 presidential video proclaiming a “new beginning” in American relations with Iran will halt the effort to build a nuclear bomb.
The Liberal Utopia is a land where the good intentions of Social Security will never bankrupt the Social Security Trust Fund.
The Liberal Utopia is a land where the good intentions of Medicare could not possibility result in trillions of unfunded liability.
The Liberal Utopia is a land where the War on Poverty was supposed to end poverty — and instead winds up sending violent crime skyrocketing, and, in the words of Thomas Sowell, setting up the American black family for rapid disintegration in the liberal welfare state “that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”
One could go on …and on and on….spotting those will-o-the-wisp glimpses of The Liberal Utopia (Obamacare here, the Obama stimulus over there, the promise to close Guantanamo way back there) with example after example of this miserably failed attempt to find or create a Liberal Utopia.
Or what our friend Mark Levin deftly calls Ameritopia.
The search for this Liberal Utopia has been going on in this country since at least 1932 and in fact before that when one keeps going on back to Woodrow Wilson’s progressives and beyond to the late 19th century when the progressive movement began to gain political steam with the likes of William Jennings Bryan and a whole host of other if lesser known figures.
The idea is always the same. To quote Levin: “Utopianism is the ideological and doctrinal foundation for statism.”
Or, to simplify: if only Americans are made to do X, The Perfect Society will manifest. […]
The State Department’s latest report on human-rights practices effectively puts the lie to the idea that the piecemeal and illusory changes in Cuba under Gen. Raúl Castro represent a genuine political opening toward greater freedom.
If anything, things are getting worse. The report, which covers 2012, says the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation counted 6,602 short-term detentions during the year, compared with 4,123 in 2011. In March 2012, the same commission recorded a 30-year record high of 1,158 short-term detentions in a single month just before the visit of Pope Benedict XVI.
Among the many abuses cited by the 2012 report are the prison sentences handed out to members of the Unión Patriotica de Cuba, the estimated 3,000 citizens held under the charge of “potential dangerousness,” state-orchestrated assaults against the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), the suspicious death of dissident Oswaldo Payá and so on.
As in any dictatorship, telling the truth is a crime: Independent journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, the first to report on the cholera outbreak in Cuba, was jailed in September for the crime of desacato (insulting speech) and remained there until last week.
The regime is willing to undertake some meek economic reforms to keep people employed. It has even dared to relax its travel requirements to allow more Cubans to leave the country if they can get a passport.
Both of these are short-term survival measures, designed as escape valves for growing internal pressure. But when it comes to free speech, political activity and freedom of association — the building blocks of a free society — the report is a depressing chronicle of human-rights abuses and a valuable reminder that repression is the Castro regime’s only response to those who demand a genuinely free Cuba. Fundamental reform? Not a chance.
Las Vegas Hospital Accused of Dumping Psychiatric Patients in California
Health officials in Las Vegas are accusing of shipping patients on Greyhound buses with one-way tickets to California.
LA’s downtown Greyhound bus depot may have been one of several California entry points for countless psychiatric patients from Nevada, if allegations against a Las Vegas medical facility can be proven.
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is formally investigating the complaints. […]
Ladies in White march in solidarity with victims of violence
Dozens of members of the Ladies in White assisted Mass this Sunday, April 21st, despite numerous cordons set up by the political police. The women prayed for the freedom of all political prisoners as they habitually do, and also in solidarity with victims of violence in Cuba, like the 40 hunger strikers of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), as well as the victims of a terrorist attack this past week in the US city of Boston.
Former political prisoner of conscience Angel Moya Acosta offered more details on his Twitter account (@jangelmoya). ”50 Ladies in White marched down 5th Avenue and dedicated their march to the hunger strikers in Santiago de Cuba, as well as the victims of the terrorist attack in Boston”.
More than 170 people were injured while 3 died in the Boston bombings. Meanwhile, in Eastern Cuba, the repressive actions of the government have dramatically increased against the 40 hunger strikers, among them Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, as they demand the release of detained dissident Luis Enrique Lozada (also on hunger strike) and calling for an end to the brutality against human rights activists in the country.
The strikers, as well as numerous other dissidents who have joined them in demonstrations of solidarity, have been victims of acts of repudiation, death threats, house raids and arrests this week.
A total of 20 Ladies in White in the province of Matanzas managed to march with flowers in their hands, according to Sayli Navarro (@SayliNavarro), a young member of the group.
Navarro added that in Guantanamo 8 women marched and made it to Mass. When the religious service came to an end, the Ladies carried out their monthly meeting in the headquarters of the group in that area.
Cuban dissident group says 40 on hunger strike to demand the release of opposition activists
Forty Cuban dissidents remained on a hunger strike Monday to push for the freedom of about 30 jailed members of the most aggressive opposition group on the eastern end of the island, according to their leader.
“Our group is determined to stop these arbitrary arrests,” said Jose Daniel Ferrer, 41, who founded the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) after he emerged from eight years in prison in 2011.
UNPACU quickly became the most active and aggressive dissident movement in eastern Cuba, organizing street marches and protests and filming videos of garbage pickers in the region as well as damage caused by Hurricane Sandy last October that is yet to be repaired.
Ferrer said he and nine other UNPACU members are on a hunger strike in his home in the town of Palmarito de Cauto as well as nine more in the nearby city of Santiago de Cuba, five in the town of Palma Soriano and five more in the city of Holguín. An additional nine are striking in prisons and two more are in Havana and Pinar del Rio.
They have been taking only water since last Tuesday, he added. Nine others who started on the hunger strike dropped out because they had become too weak.
The hunger strike is designed to call attention to the plight of the 30 jailed UNPACU members. Some are being held in police stations and may be freed, but most have been sent to jails, presumably to await trials.
Ferrer and most of the hunger strikers began their protest in Santiago’s main plaza, Cespedes Park. But they retreated to the adjoining grounds of the city’s Catholic Cathedral amid threats from pro-government mobs and police.
Dissident videos showed police detaining several dissidents and shoving them into patrol cars on a street corner between the park and the church.
Is the Castro dictatorship trying to kill political prisoner Angel Santiesteban?
Angel Santiesteban
Supporters of Cuban political prisoner Angel Santiesteban on Monday posted on his blog a disturbing account of a recent attack on the imprisoned writer:
We just received a very worrying message from Havana from Angel, who so far has told us in other communications that he is being treated badly and is held under severe conditions in Prison 1580.
As we denounced yesterday, they only allow him phone calls of a few minutes, because of which the uncertainty is still greater, as in those few minutes there is not enough time to explain what’s happening.
Right now the information we have is that Angel had asked to eat food and wear clothes that the prison authorities don’t allow, and he is not receiving the letters sent by family and friends.
Today he was able to call — for just a couple of minutes again — and denounced that they held him by his hands and feet and forced him to swallow a strange liquid, and he didn’t know what it was.
Apparently this is a method of reprisal because Angel has not been eating any of the prison food, only the food brought to him from outside: cookies and things like that, very little nourishment.
Today he also asked that we send pants a size smaller than his usual size. And said he didn’t feel well. We don’t know if it is because of what they forced him to drink.
It is no secret to anyone what resources the regime’s assassins have up their sleeves. There are enough denunciations from prisoners who have been made ill by treatment of this kind, some of them gravely so, because they’ve been made to drink strange things.
ALL THE EYES OF THE WORLD ARE FOCUSED ON RAUL CASTRO: ONCE MORE WE WANT TO EXPRESS THAT WE HOLD HIM DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE, ALONG WITH HIS HENCHMEN, FOR WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANGEL.
Word’s getting out that some “performance artist,” or “musician” or “poet” named Amanda Palmer composed a poem in honor of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Many are outraged but in fact the “poem” comes across as pretty ambiguous, and the proceeds–for what they’re worth–are supposedly dedicated to a charity for the bombing victims.
On the OTHER hand, this same Palmer-person titled one of her poems after one of Che Guevara’s asinine aphorisms, “The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” She also flaunts a Soviet secret police cap during performances and boasts of buying Che Guevara socks.
Amanda, sweetie, if you start dedicating proceeds of your poetry to the victims of Communism they’ll be spread pretty thinly, believe me.
Btw, her performance with the Soviet police cap was in New York City! (to rave reviews, naturally)…Amanda, sweetie, you wanna prove your genuine “boldness” and “feistiness” and “edginess” and “iconoclasm?”…try a Nazi cap.
On April 22nd, 2000 the U.S. Dept. of Justice violated the U.S. constitution at the whim and behest of a Stalinist dictator that the very U.S. Dept. of State officially condemns as a “State Sponsor of Terror.”
All that stomping and macing and firepower in the dawn hours of April 22, 2000 horrified and enraged many people for sure – it also amazed. Why such overkill? Why such “Shock and Awe,” many wondered?
Well, it appears that those INS agents genuinely feared that they were on a mission fraught with deadly peril from massive firepower. Fidel Castro himself, you see, had confided to his friend Bill Clinton via his lawyer friend Gregory Craig that Lazaro Gonzalez’ house was crammed with typical Cuban-American right-wing maniacs, all heavily armed, foaming at the mouth, and ready to rumble. The Gonzalez home could well start spewing the same firepower against American freedom-fighters as did the monastery atop Monte Cassino Italy in 1944.
Given that American liberals pretty much share Castro’s view of American citizens of Cuban heritage, the Stalinist dictator’s warning was warmly received –and scrupulously acted-upon.
But it turned out that the only blasting that morning came from mace and tear gas into the faces of ladies holding infants and rosaries.
“Excessive force” by U.S. Government agents is frightening for sure…But a U.S. Justice Dept. that accepted the word of a State Sponsor of Terror whose lifelong dream is to nuke the U.S. (Fidel Castro) over that of lawful U.S. citizens (Cuban-Americans who claimed that from day one Fidel Castro was the one orchestrating Elian’s return)—such action by a federal agency should really give more U.S. citizens more pause.
(Pero fijense que tipo mas DESCARA’O(!!!) este Fontova!..en el titulo le pone el nombre Tamerlan Tsarnaev–pero el articulo tiene nada–NADITA!!!–que ver con este terrorista–el SINVERGUENZON(!!!) Fontova lo pone simplemente para atraer (y enganjar) a los lectores Americanos!)
Forty Cuban dissidents remained on a hunger strike Monday to push for the freedom of about 30 jailed members of the most aggressive opposition group on the eastern end of the island, according to their leader.
