Majority of Democrats Are NOT Proud To Be Americans

(Originally Posted July 2018)

UPDATERepublicans, Holding the Patriotic Line!

Currently, 32% of Democrats — down from 43% in 2017 and 56% in 2013 — are extremely proud. The decline preceded the election of Donald Trump but has accelerated in the past year.

Less than half of independents, 42%, are also extremely proud. That is down slightly from 48% a year ago, and 50% in 2013.

As has typically been the case, Republicans are more inclined to say they are extremely proud to be Americans than are Democrats and independents. Seventy-four percent of Republicans are extremely proud, which is numerically the highest over the last five years….

(GALLUP)

This is the Democrat base… and influences Democratic politics. It boos God/Israel being in the Democrat platform. It tries to get rid of God from the pledge (“Democrats and independents were more likely than Republicans to think the phrase should be taken out”). It tries to force religious people to pay for abortions. Here is BREITBART:

This Fourth of July, according to a recent Pew survey, 60% of full-spectrum “Solid Liberals” are not proud to be Americans.

The Pew Research survey found that just 40% of so-called Solid Liberals “often feel proud to be American” while “60% say that characterization does not fit them.”

According to the comprehensive survey, 69% of Solid Liberals are white, and 41% are under 40 years of age. They make up 15% of the general public and 17% of registered voters. Almost unanimously they love President Barack Obama – 84% approve Obama’s job performance, “with 51% approving very strongly.”

Among all Americans, Obama is considered to be the worst president since World War II, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll (2014). 

In addition, 80% of this group believe that “racial discrimination is the main reason why many blacks can’t get ahead these days,” 87% think abortion should be legal in almost all circumstances, and 83% say “the government should do more to help the needy, even if it means going deeper into debt.”

Pew also found that 52% of Solid Liberals “have college degrees and 21% have graduate degrees” while “45% say if they could live anywhere they wanted, they would live in a city.” While 93% of Solid Liberals believe that “stricter” environmental regulations are worth the cost, only “12% say the description ‘hunter, fisher or sportsman’ fits them well, the lowest share of any typology group.”

(Click Graph To Enlarge)

Conservatives are significantly prouder to be Americans.

Pew’s survey found that “81% of Business Conservatives and 72% of Steadfast Conservatives say the phrase ‘often feel proud to be American’ describes them well.” Pew also concluded that the “feelings of pride in being American – and a belief that honor and duty are core values – are much more widespread among the two conservative groups than the other typology groups.”

An excerpt from the book, Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828 (found here), by Walter A. McDougall. (H/T Michael Medved)

The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years. If some ghostly ship, some Flying Dutchman, were transported in time from the year 1600 into the present, the crew would be amazed by our technology and the sheer numbers of people on the globe, but the array of civilizations would be recognizable.

There is today, as there was then: a huge Chinese Empire run by an authoritarian but beleaguered bureaucracy; a homogeneous, anxious, suspicious Japan; a teeming crazy-quilt of Hindus and Muslims in India attempting to make a state of themselves; an amorphous Russian empire pulsing outward or inward in proportion to Muscovy’s projection of force; a vast Islamic crescent hostile to infidels but beset by rival centers of power; a dynamic, more-or-less Christian civilization in Europe aspiring to unity but vexed by its dense congeries of nations and tongues; and finally an Iberian/Amerindian culture in South America marked by relative poverty and strategic impotence.

The only continent that would astound the Renaissance time-travelers would be North America, which was primitive and nearly vacant as late as 1607, but which today hosts the mightiest, richest, most creative civilization on earth – a civilization, moreover, that perturbs the trajectories of all other civilizations just by existing.

One might object that the most salient features of modern history have not been territorial and demographic, but intellectual and political: the invention and spread of enlightened ideas of human rights and democratic self-government on the one hand, and the scientific and technological explosions in human power on the other hand. That is so, but the rise of America goes far to explain the rapidity and scale of their triumphs

Gay, Che Wearing T-Shirt Guy Asked About Irony (LARRY ELDER UPDATE)

What’s the deal with people wearing Che Guevara t-shirts? In today’s anti-racism culture, it seems the “woke” turn a blind eye to the real Che Guevara. In this episode, Larry shares commentary from Humberto Fontava, who documents the Argentine Marxist revolutionary’s blatant racist, homophobic and murdering history. He also points out how the mainstream media pushes an ignorant and dominated the romanticized image of Che Guevara.

From the video description:

  • “Providence RI pride festival brings people expressing their way how gays should… One guy expressed a Che shirt. Che murdered gay people. Ironic much?”

Not only did he kill gays… but the gay “Che” guy responded about not wanting a ruling class to tell him what to wear. Um… he does know that uniforms of the same color and quality are given to all the “comrades” to make them “equal,” right? In fact, the only people with differing uniforms are the ruling class. What an ass-hat. See my main post on CHE/CASTRO.

Here is Will Witt from Prager U discussing the Che Cafe on UCSD’s campus…

What could be more disgraceful than to wear a Che Guevara shirt? He was a bully, rapist, murderer, thug, sociopath, communist, socialist, totalitarian, racist, and jailer of gays. (Old video went defunct… new video took it’s place.)

Heinrich-Guevara Meets SJW

…Notice the shirt. Che Guevara was chief executioner for Fidel Castro’s monstrous regime. He is the direct corollary of Heinrich Himmler: the guy in charge of making sure large numbers of people were murdered on schedule. She probably believes oligarchical collectivism is morally justified, so long as you call it communism instead of Nazism. (MOONBATTERY)

 

 

 

Restaurant Using Socialist Business Model Closes

After posting the following, GATEWAY PUNDIT asks: “Has anyone on the left ever read a single history book?”

Grand Rapids’ worker-run, no-tipping restaurant closes

The end has come for a popular Grand Rapids restaurant known as much for its creative vegan dishes as its progressive business model.

For much of its five-year existence, the eatery went by the moniker Bartertown Diner, until it was rebranded in September to The Garden Diner and Cafe.

The offbeat 30-seat eatery announced this month that its last day would be Wednesday, Nov. 30.

After a strong summer, the restaurant with about a dozen employees had struggled in recent months, said Thad Cummings. He took it over in March with Crystal Lecoy, who left two months later.

“I was an original investor in it,” Cummings said. “I wanted to push it to see if the model could be done.”…

Bartertown’s initial menu was described in a 2011 MLive review as an “imaginative” array of veggie, vegan and raw dishes that came with names like Dirty Dirty Beans & Greens and Raw Trash salad…

Employees would be expected to join the union, Industrial Workers of the World, he said.

In keeping with the worker empowerment theme, he commissioned a mural depicting Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong and other provocative leaders tackling restaurant duties.

In the end, the restaurant failed to achieve the employee business model it envisioned.

A Democrat Hero Dies (Trump v. Obama)

Via the White House:

Statement by the President on the Passing of Fidel Castro

At this time of Fidel Castro’s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans – in Cuba and in the United States – with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.

For nearly six decades, the relationship between the United States and Cuba was marked by discord and profound political disagreements. During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends – bonds of family, culture, commerce, and common humanity. This engagement includes the contributions of Cuban Americans, who have done so much for our country and who care deeply about their loved ones in Cuba.

Today, we offer condolences to Fidel Castro’s family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people. In the days ahead, they will recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.

President-elect Donald Trump’s statement that was just sent out (Gateway Pundit):

President-Elect Donald J. Trump Statement

“Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.

“While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.

“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty. I join the many Cuban Americans who supported me so greatly in the presidential campaign, including the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association that endorsed me, with the hope of one day soon seeing a free Cuba.”

One should read the rest of this post below over at GAY PATRIOT:

….Fidel Castro is dead at ninety. Far too long, if you ask me. Castro was a brutal, Socialist, dictator who consigned millions of his people to life in an oppressive, impoverished gulag where they enjoyed no civil liberties and no human rights. He sent troops around the world to commit atrocities against civilians; imprisoned, tortured, and murdered political opponents (or any critics of his regime), sponsored terrorism, and… oh yeah.. sent gay Cubans to concentration camps.

And to the Democrat left, he was a hero.

Bernie Sanders was a huge fan of Fidel Castro, praising him for having “educated their kids, gave their kids healthcare, totally transformed the society.” Bernie Sanders also said that he thought Cuban style bread lines were pretty neat (Reminder: Half the Democrat Party voted for this guy). New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, spent his summer break from college helping Fidel Castro spread communism in Nicaragua. (John Kerry and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey also counted themselves as allies of Nicaragua’s Castro-style Sandinista dictatorship). Democrats of the Congressional Black Caucus  traveled to Cuba in 2009 and returned with gushing praise for the murderous, bloodthirsty autocrat. An NPR reporter described a kiss from Castro’s brother as though it were a Holy experience. Hollywood leftists including Harry Belafonte, Jack Nicholson, Danny Glover, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, Charlize Theron, and, of course, Michael Moore have heaped praise on the dictator. Most recently, NFL socialist douchebag Colin Kaepernick appeared in Miami wearing a Castro T-shirt. Beyonce and Jay-Z honeymooned on Castro’s island gulag. (Canada’s Prime Minister and the Leader of Britain’s Labour Party are also in mourning, the latter referring to the Marxist dictator as “a champion of social justice.”)

Goes to show what the left actually means by “social justice,” (i.e. labor camps for opponents of socialism).

And of course, Castro’s mass-murdering, racist thug Che Guevara is a fashion icon on the left.

[…..]

BTW: Castro died with a Net Worth of close to a billion dollars….

Here is a very long presentation by Humberto Fontova on the medias obsession with this racist mass-murderor. The uploader on YouTube included this as part of the description to the video:

  • “Propaganda is the heart of our struggle. We must never abandon propaganda.” (Fidel Castro, 1955.)
  • “Much more valuable than recruits for our guerrilla force were American media recruits to export our propaganda.” (Che Guevara, 1959.)
  • For over half a century you’ve been conned by the media, academia and Hollywood. Come learn how badly.

More posts on the matter:

Here is a portion of PART DEUX of Gay Patriots posts on Castro:

Here are the facts about the left’s favorite commie:

  1. Castro was an old-world communist dictator who hated individual freedom & maintained power by oppressing & terrorizing his own people.
  2. Castro murdered those who disagreed with him.
  3. Castro ran concentration camps & filled them with “undesirables,” including dissidents, homosexuals, AIDS victims, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Afro-Cuban priests & others declared “unfit” for the moral Cuban revolution.
  4. Castro personally asked the U.S.S.R to nuke the United States.
  5. Che Guevara, a Castro cabinet member, said if the nukes were under Cuban control, they would have launched them “into the very heart of the United States….the victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”
  6. In 1996, Castro shot down American civilian aircraft, killing 3 Americans.
  7. Life for an average Cuban was hell under Castro. Restricted religious freedom, healthcare, food, movement, technology, transportation & regular forced separations of families.
  8. Castro’s own daughter & sister fled his rule.
  9. Castro banned all music by the Beatles in 1964.
  10. On an island nation, owning or riding on a boat was illegal under the Castro regime.

Colin Kaepernick ~ Alex Boone | Tomi Lahren (Plus, Islam?)

Former U.S. Rep. ALLEN WEST had a Scripture to recommend to Kaepernick.

I would recommend a simple scripture from the wise King Solomon for Mr. Kaepernick, Proverbs 17:28 (NIV): “Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues,”

Or, as the old folks down South would say, “best for a stupid person to keep their mouth shut and not open it and let everyone know they are.”

I will give more context to Alex Boone’s comments after the video:

This story is making more sense as we get a few days behind it. THE DAILY CALLER notes a recent change in Kaepernick’s worldview that is driving this support for a racist, black nationalist political movement [Black Lives Matter]:

A recent report indicates that Colin Kaepernick’s Muslim girlfriend Nessa Diab was behind his decision to not stand during the national anthem.

The report from sports gossip blog Terez Owens states, “As the entire world knows by now, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the National Anthem in Friday’s pre-season game against Green Bay because he was protesting ‘black oppression’ in the United States. We’re now hearing that it was actually his girlfriend Nessa’s idea for Colin to protest. Colin and his girlfriend, Nessa Diab, an MTV DJ, are still planning an Islamic-style wedding.”

SNOPES as well, while saying his full conversion is false… notes the following, “…but all of these reports stemmed back to an anonymous tip posted by the sports gossip site Terez Owens in July 2015″:

  • Now we’re hearing he’s transitioning to become a Muslim, according to people close to the player. We received this in our tipbox, Colin’s girlfriend, Hot 97 DJ Nessa, introduced him to the teachings of Islam, and he’s ready to embrace it fully. Our tipster tells us Kaep and Nessa are going to have a traditional Muslim wedding. Colin seems to be all over the place lately.

This is the basic line so far:

  • There are some facts about Colin Kaepernick that you should know. 1) He recently converted to Islam, 2) His girlfriend,  DJ Nessa Diab, is a prominent activist in Black Lives Matter and is Muslim. She is also a fan of the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro. (Uncle Sam’S Misguided Children)

We will build up to Nessa’s background, but first, she has posted a couple of things I would say also influenced Colin. For instance:

And in the recent press conference by Colin discussing his not standing up for the National Anthem, he was wearing this “pro-Cuba/pro-Castro” shirt on:kaepernick2-1

BABALÚ BLOG has some excellent commentary on the shirt:

We’re guessing his t-shirt statement wasn’t satiric. Instead we’re guessing that –owing much to modern American education–this black American athlete is (unwittingly) hailing the man who jailed and tortured the largest number of black political prisoners in the modern history of the Western hemisphere and who craved–and came within a hair of– nuking the nation that has made Kaepernick a multi-MULTI-millionaire.

[…..]

“The Negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.” (CHE GUEVARA)

THE WEEKLY STANDARD continues with the bottom line for Colin:

…However, there was one startling display of ignorance by Kaepernick that makes me think he’s not the best person to listen to on the topic of racial injustice. I’m referring to his attire at the press conference: a Malcolm X hat, and though it’s difficult to make out, his T-shirt is of photos commemorating Malcolm X meeting Fidel Castro.

One can revisit the great civil rights debate over using violence as a means to an end; suffice to say, America’s better off that Martin Luther King, Jr. and his commitment to nonviolence, not Malcolm X and his “by any means necessary” approach, won the day. And this divide is only highlighted by Castro’s harboring of a bunch of American cop killers, such as Assata Shakur and Eldridge Cleaver, who claim their unconscionable and murderous actions were done in the name of “racial justice”.

The biggest problem here is that Kaepernick is seemingly unaware of Castro’s legacy. Aside from Castro dragooning and executing Christians and gays, Castro’s record on racial justice is decidedly not “woke”, as the Internet likes to say. While Cuba’s legacy of racism predates Castro, it’s safe to say overt racism against individuals of African ancestry there remains far more pronounced than it is in the United States. In fact, racism is kind of an unstated official policy: “State-posts, government jobs, or positions in the tourism industry are often allocated on the basis of skin color. Take a look at the top office holders in Cuba. See any black faces there? No,” Mediaite’s AJ Delgado wrote.

Earlier this year, as the White House was normalizing relations with Cuba, the New York Timesdeclared “Cuba Says It Has Solved Racism. Obama Isn’t So Sure.” Obama even addressed the topic of Cuban racism explicitly during his historic visit. But there’s no evidence Obama used his leverage to extract any meaningful reforms to address the issue.

The fact remains that the Cuban government doesn’t deal with racism, because to talk openly about it would be to admit that Cuba’s not the socialist paradise it’s cracked up to be. But don’t take my word for it—Cuban editor Roberto Zurbano wrote an illuminating article about Cuban racism that was translated and published in the New York Times three years ago:

Racism in Cuba has been concealed and reinforced in part because it isn’t talked about. The government hasn’t allowed racial prejudice to be debated or confronted politically or culturally, often pretending instead as though it didn’t exist. Before 1990, black Cubans suffered a paralysis of economic mobility while, paradoxically, the government decreed the end of racism in speeches and publications. To question the extent of racial progress was tantamount to a counterrevolutionary act. This made it almost impossible to point out the obvious: racism is alive and well.

As a result of a critical article about Cuban racism being published in an American newspaper, Zurbano lost his job at the state-sponsored Casa de las Americas cultural center. Colin Kaepernick, on the other hand, appears to be in no danger of losing his decadent, capitalist, multimillion-dollar paycheck for speaking out against his government.

UNCLE SAM’S MISGUIDED CHILDREN notes the above in a powerful and personal way:kaepernick mom and dad white ppl

….Mr. Kaepernick, you have no clue what Oppression feels like. I know exactly what it feels like. I can tell you as a communist survivor who almost saw his family sent to prison because of bringing a drawing of the birth of Christ and telling my 1st grade kids about Jesus.

I remember clearly watching my father being beaten by Castro henchmen right in front of my grandma’s house… all because we were coming to America.

I remember having only a glass of sugar with water because no one would hire my father or mother for fear they would receive the same discrimination.

I understand you embrace communist/socialist ideas, yet I do not see you giving away all of your millions of dollars to charity. And if you hate it here so much, why aren’t you fleeing to North Korea or Cuba?

You are a new Moslem convert who supports an ideology that has kept women oppressed for thousands of years, without even the right to vote or participate in any leadership role without permission of their father or husband.

You talk about ‘oppression’ from the white men, yet your own white parents have given you a college education  and life of  “white privilege.”

History shows that blacks sold blacks into slavery.  Today, the ‘human trade’ as they call it now is predominantly run by Moslem Arabs: the diamond slavery is a huge example.

It shows that no matter how many millions you have, you can still be a slave in your own plantation.

Nessa has been heavily influenced by contact with the Middle-East dues to her fathers job, as San Jose’s paper THE MERCURY NEWS notes:Pig Skin

  • She was born in Southern California, but frequently moved between the U.S. and Middle East growing up, thanks to her father’s job.

STARCASM enlightens us further:

Nessa’s full name is Nessa Diab and she is originally from Southern California. As a child she moved back and forth from California to the Middle East because of her father’s job, and it was during this time that she first began writing songs. “Here is the thing, I was a young girl fearing for my life-I wore gas masks to school,” Nessa said of being present during the Gulf War. “I heard war sirens constantly and I knew at this point I had to break out of this lifestyle.”

I have spent hours looking for her father and why he would be in-n-out of the Middle-East. I contacted a couple fellow bloggers to help in the endeavor. But the connection with radical Islam and the Black Lives Matter movement and their anti-Semitism is unmistakable, CONSERVATIVE TREE-HOUSE:

  • In the social justice arena, there is no daylight between the various BLM activism groups, and activist Islam.   They are interwoven amid every controversial eruption over the past six years.  We have tried to draw attention to it numerous times, but many don’t fully grasp the scope of the relationship between radical Islam and Black Lives Matter.  It’s a symbiosis, a complete synergy in activism and intent.

Keep in mind some key questions remain about Colin and his girlfriend. Was her father connected to radical Islam in some way (say, the Muslim Brotherhood)? What was his job? Maybe she is an elSisi fan? Does she have connections to the Nation of Islam (NOI) or the Nation of Gods and Earths (5%’ers)?

Surely this will be continued!

“The Last Communist City” ~ A City-Journal Article (Updated)

Before the WONDERFUL article…

…one should also consider C-SPANs interview “Book Discussion on Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant” ~ the discussing Cuba, Fidel, Che Guevara, and their “useful idiots,” is Humberto Fontova. His Amazon.com page has three books on Cuba available. Here is the truncated video interview:

  • Inside the BookTV Bus, Humberto Fontova was interviewed about his book Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant, published by Regnery Publishing. He spoke about the media’s affixation with the Cuban dictator. Mr. Fontova also discussed political prisoners and a decline in health care.

I want to say, firstly, our of all the politically/culturally minded journals I subscribe to, The City Journal is by far the best, if one were to subscribe to one journal, this would be it. Here are a few excerpts from the article, “The Last Communist City: A visit to the dystopian Havana that tourists never see

…Marxists have ruled Cuba for more than a half-century now. Fidel Castro, Argentine guerrilla Che Guevara, and their 26th of July Movement forced Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959 and replaced his standard-issue authoritarian regime with a Communist one. The revolutionaries promised liberal democracy, but Castro secured absolute power and flattened the country with a Marxist-Leninist battering ram. The objectives were total equality and the abolition of money; the methods were total surveillance and political prisons. The state slogan, then and now, is “socialism or death.”

Cuba was one of the world’s richest countries before Castro destroyed it—and the wealth wasn’t just in the hands of a tiny elite. “Contrary to the myth spread by the revolution,” wrote Alfred Cuzan, a professor of political science at the University of West Florida, “Cuba’s wealth before 1959 was not the purview of a privileged few. . . . Cuban society was as much of a middle-class society as Argentina and Chile.” In 1958, Cuba had a higher per-capita income than much of Europe. “More Americans lived in Cuba prior to Castro than Cubans lived in the United States,” Cuban exile Humberto Fontova, author of a series of books about Castro and Guevara, tells me. “This was at a time when Cubans were perfectly free to leave the country with all their property. In the 1940s and 1950s, my parents could get a visa for the United States just by asking. They visited the United States and voluntarily returned to Cuba. More Cubans vacationed in the U.S. in 1955 than Americans vacationed in Cuba. Americans considered Cuba a tourist playground, but even more Cubans considered the U.S. a tourist playground.” Havana was home to a lot of that prosperity, as is evident in the extraordinary classical European architecture that still fills the city. Poor nations do not—cannot—build such grand or elegant cities.

But rather than raise the poor up, Castro and Guevara shoved the rich and the middle class down. The result was collapse. “Between 1960 and 1976,” Cuzan says, “Cuba’s per capita GNP in constant dollars declined at an average annual rate of almost half a percent. The country thus has the tragic distinction of being the only one in Latin America to have experienced a drop in living standards over the period.”

Communism destroyed Cuba’s prosperity, but the country experienced unprecedented pain and deprivation when Moscow cut off its subsidies after the fall of the Soviet Union. Journalist and longtime Cuba resident Mark Frank writes vividly about this period in his book Cuban Revelations. “The lights were off more than they were on, and so too was the water. . . . Food was scarce and other consumer goods almost nonexistent. . . . Doctors set broken bones without anesthesia. . . . Worm dung was the only fertilizer.” He quotes a nurse who tells him that Cubans “used to make hamburgers out of grapefruit rinds and banana peels; we cleaned with lime and bitter orange and used the black powder in batteries for hair dye and makeup.” “It was a haunting time,” Frank wrote, “that still sends shivers down Cubans’ collective spines.”…

Some equate Cuba to Iraq or Afghanistan. The author of the article, after being told this by a fellow travelor responded to this in the article:

I visited Iraq seven times during the war and didn’t have the heart to tell her that Baghdad, while ugly and dangerous, is vastly freer and more prosperous these days than Havana. Anyway, Iraq is precisely the kind of country with which Castro wants you to compare Cuba. It’s the wrong comparison. So are impoverished Third World countries like Guatemala and Haiti. Cuba isn’t a developing country; it’s a once-developed country destroyed by its own government. Havana was a magnificent Western city once. It should be compared not with Baghdad, Kabul, Guatemala City, or Port-au-Prince but with formerly Communist Budapest, Prague, or Berlin. Havana’s history mirrors theirs, after all.

[….]

…As for the free health care, patients have to bring their own medicine, their own bedsheets, and even their own iodine to the hospital. Most of these items are available only on the illegal black market, moreover, and must be paid for in hard currency—and sometimes they’re not available at all. Cuba has sent so many doctors abroad—especially to Venezuela, in exchange for oil—that the island is now facing a personnel shortage. “I don’t want to say there are no doctors left,” says an American man who married a Cuban woman and has been back dozens of times, “but the island is now almost empty. I saw a banner once, hanging from somebody’s balcony, that said, DO I NEED TO GO TO VENEZUELA FOR MY HEADACHE?

Housing is free, too, but so what? Americans can get houses in abandoned parts of Detroit for only $500—which makes them practically free—but no one wants to live in a crumbling house in a gone-to-the-weeds neighborhood. I saw adequate housing in the Cuban countryside, but almost everyone in Havana lives in a Detroit-style wreck, with caved-in roofs, peeling paint, and doors hanging on their hinges at odd angles.

Education is free, and the country is effectively 100 percent literate, thanks to Castro’s campaign to teach rural people to read shortly after he took power. But the regime has yet to make a persuasive argument that a totalitarian police state was required to get the literacy rate from 80 percent to 100 percent. After all, almost every other country in the Western Hemisphere managed the same feat at the same time, without the brutal repression.

Cuba is short of everything but air and sunshine. In her book, Sánchez describes an astonishing appearance by Raúl Castro on television, during which he boasted that the economy was doing so well now that everyone could drink milk. “To me,” Sánchez wrote, “someone who grew up on a gulp of orange-peel tea, the news seemed incredible.” She never thought she’d see the day. “I believed we would put a man on the moon, take first place among all nations in the upcoming Olympics, or discover a vaccine for AIDS before we would put the forgotten morning café con leche, coffee with milk, within reach of every person on this island.” And yet Raúl’s promise of milk for all was deleted from the transcription of the speech in Granma, the Communist Party newspaper. He went too far: there was not enough milk to ensure that everyone got some.

Even things as simple as cooking oil and soap are black-market goods. Individuals who, by some illegal means or another, manage to acquire such desirables will stand on street corners and whisper “cooking oil” or “sugar” to passersby, and then sell the product on the sly out of their living room. If they’re caught, both sellers and buyers will be arrested, of course, but the authorities can’t put the entire country in jail. “Everyone cheats,” says Eire. “One must in order to survive. The verb Ωto steal≈ has almost vanished from usage. Breaking the rules is necessary. Resolví mi problema, which means ‘I solved my problem,’ is the Cuban way of referring to stealing or cheating or selling on the black market.”

Cuba has two economies now: the national Communist economy for the majority; and a quasi-capitalist one for foreigners and the elite…

[….]

…The Floridita bar in downtown Havana was one of Ernest Hemingway’s hangouts when he lived there (from 1940 until 1960, the year after Castro came to power). He was in the Floridita all the time—and, in a way, he still is. There’s a statue of him sitting on his favorite bar stool, grinning at today’s patrons. The décor is exactly the same, but there’s a big difference: everyone in the bar these days is a tourist. Cubans aren’t strictly banned any more, but a single bottle of beer costs a week’s salary. No one would blow his dismal paycheck on that.

If he were still around, Hemingway would be stunned to see what has happened to his old haunt. Cubans certainly aren’t happy about it, but the tourists are another story—especially the world’s remaining Marxoid fellow travelers, who show up in Havana by the planeload. Such people are clearly unteachable. I got into an argument with one at the Floridita when I pointed out that none of the patrons were Cuban. “There are places in the United States that some can’t afford,” she retorted. Sure, but come on. Not even the poorest Americans have to pay a week’s wage for a beer…

[….]

…An advertisement in my hotel claimed that the Sierra Maestra restaurant on the top floor is “probably” the best in Havana. I had saved the Sierra Maestra for my last night and rode the elevator up to the 25th floor. I had my first and only steak on the island and washed it down with Chilean red wine. The tiny bill set me back no more than having a pizza delivered at home would, but the total nevertheless exceeded an entire month’s local salary. Not surprisingly, I ate alone. Every other table was empty. The staff waited on me as if I were the president of some faraway minor republic.

I stared at the city below out the window as I sipped my red wine. Havana looked like a glittering metropolis in the dark. Night washed away the rot and the grime and revealed nothing but city lights. It occurred to me that Havana will look mostly the same—at night, anyway—after it is liberated from the tyrannical imbeciles who govern it now. I tried to pretend that I was looking out on a Cuba that was already free and that the tables around me were occupied—by local people, not foreigners—but the fantasy faded fast. I was all alone at the top of Cuba’s Elysium and yearning for home—where capitalism’s inequalities are not so jagged and stark.

You Should READ It All!

ReasonTV:

John Stossle & Daily Beast:

Cuban’s in L.A. Fighting Castro:

Sen. Marco Rubion on Jay-Z:

Other Worthwhile Articles:

Walmart Ditches the “Stars & Bars” But Keeps cliCHE Racism

The only problem is… WalMart still sells merchandise with a mass-murderer on them. Gateway Pundit quotes one of the best writers on Che and Fidel:

Fontova wrote about Guevara’s and the Castro regime’s anti-Black racism in a 2009 column at Human Events chastising members of the Congressional Black Caucus for meeting in Cuba with the communist dictator brothers Fidel and Raul Castro:

Racism is one of the cornerstones of the Castro regime. As Fidel’s close friend and ally, the murderous Ernesto “Che” Guevara, once said, “The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent… We’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the Cuban revolution. By which I mean: nothing

…Today the prison population in Stalinist/Apartheid Cuba is 90% black while only 9% of the ruling Stalinist party is black. As these black legislators cavorted in Cuba, a black Cuban anti-communist named Antunez, who suffered 17 years in Castro’s dungeons (essentially for quoting Martin Luther King and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights in a public square), was on a hunger strike against Castroism. I will quote his sister from a samizdat smuggled out of Cuba last year while he was still in prison:

“The Cuban government tries to fool the world with siren songs depicting racial equality in our country. But it is all a farce, as I and my family can attest, having suffered from the systematic racism directed at us by Castro’s regime. My brother suffers the scourge of racial hatred every day. The beatings are always accompanied by racial epithets. They set dogs on him. They deny him medical attention. They kept him from attending his mother’s funeral.”

“The racist mentality is so ingrained among Cuba’s agents of repression that when mixed race groups are stopped on the street, only the blacks are asked for their identification papers. The only thing I have to thank the Cuban revolution for,” she quoted her brother, “is for restoring the yoke of slavery that my ancestors lived under.”

Stella McCartney’s New “Anti-Cruelty” Clothing Line

An unrelated video so the viewer knows who she is:

This comes by way of Gateway Pundit!

Cuba Libre! — because nothing screams freedom like caricatures of Fidel Castro and Che Guevera

Paul McCartney’s fashion designer daughter introduced her latest anti-cruelty spring line with a Cuba-themed party that celebrated Marxist killers Fidel Castro and Che Guevera. Townhall reported:

With a little help from her friendly Dad (Paul) Stella McCartney has made quite a name for herself as an ultra-chic fashion designer. This week she introduced her spring line on Manhattan’s Elizabeth Street with a Cuba-themed garden party where Fidel Castro and Che Guevara featured among the main props of the cheeky soiree.

The Stalinist mass-murderers featured both as mannequins and as live costumed humans who walked around posing for pictures with the ultra-chic models and guests along with the delighted (and scrupulously vegetarian) hostess.

In keeping with Stella Mc Cartney’s “anti-cruelty” beliefs the event featured strictly vegetarian foodstuffs…

…read more...

See my post on Cuba:The Last Communist City” ~ A City-Journal Article (Updated)

If You Are Juden’s, er, Conservatives, You Need Not Apply

If you are a Republican, you need not speak at a university commencement or convocation.
If you are a conservative Republican you need not apply for a job, as a waiter or an CEO

Totalitarian thinking is rampant on the left (http://youtu.be/6Hm6Le4pDM8), lesbian author Tammy Bruce wrote about this many years ago in her book, “The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds.” As the book “The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America’s Campuses” pointed out many years ago, as well as many others.

Martin Niemöller

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

  • True for You, But Not for Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith
  • True Tolerance: Liberalism and the Necessity of Judgment
  • Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism
  • The Intolerance of Tolerance
  • The New Tolerance
  • Natural Law and Public Reason
  • Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality: Contemporary Essays
  • Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality
  • Clash Of Orthodoxies: Law Religion & Morality In Crisis
  • Natural Law and Natural Rights
  • The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values
  • The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
  • Liberalism: Fatal Consequences
  • Death by Liberalism: The Fatal Outcome of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies
  • At War with the Word
  • Political Correctness The Cloning of the American Mind
  • Muzzled: From T-Ball to Terrorism-True Stories That Should Be Fiction
  • Are You Politically Correct?: Debating America’s Cultural Standards
  • Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air
  • A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist
  • Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics
  • Moral Apologetics for Contemporary Christians: Pushing Back Against Cultural and Religious Critics
  • The Assault: Liberalism’s Attack on Religion, Freedom, and Democracy
  • The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals
  • Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media

The Left has a propensity for totalitarian thinking. Leftist movements throughout the twentieth century are harbingers (http://youtu.be/iQcUkd1w_TY) to the idea that inside every progressive/liberal there is a tyrant waiting to get out. Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh City, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, etc., these were men not pushing a conservative ideal, but a leftist ideology. A “total” way of thinking.

They just didn’t — overnight — come and take Jews, priests, pastors, gypsies, and the like and kill them in NAZI Germany. [NAZI means: National Socialist (Nationalsozialismus) Party of Germany — again, leftist ideology.] There was years of demonization, firing from jobs, shouting down of rather than dialogue, and the like.

History is a harbinger, who will stand up on the Left and say, “Whoa, enough-is-enough?” Black sports writers cannot dissent from the liberal mantra (http://youtu.be/LKXKccyb2e8), to Democrates changing names of fish [the Asian Carp, which came from Asia] to the “Evasive Carp,” because it is somehow less derogatory.

Democratic Senators on the floor of the Senate calling for the name of the Redskins to be changed (why not Oklahoma? That is Choctaw for “Red-Man”), to saying swastika flags were at T.E.A. Party rallies (http://youtu.be/M58Wewdaurc), to yet others saying opposition to Obama-care is racist (http://tinyurl.com/mmad43o) — or that Obama-care, the term, should be outlawed (https://vimeo.com/20273419).

This is some older commentary by me explaining What Fascism Is:


…a librarian at Ohio University recommended the book, The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom, and was voted on by his fellow professors 21-0 [with nine abstentions, so kinda like 30-0] as being a sexual harasser for recommending a conservative book. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.

See blog for Friday, April 14, 2006 (political commentary): TigerHawk – “Shame of Ohio State Univesity”

Another example:

The political commentators of the same political philosophy, when on campuses are shouted down and threatened with bodily harm (Ann Coulter), when opposing viewpoints are not shouted down on university campuses, and the guests dont need bodyguards (Cindy Sheehan).

See blog (political commentary): Audacious Epigone – “Fascism in Connecticut”

Let us look at what we are told is suppose to be the political landscape if it were to be put into a line graph. Again, the following graph is wrong:

Really this is misleading. For one, it doesn’t allow for anarchy, which is a form of governance (or lack thereof). Also, it places democracy in the center… as if this is what one should strive for, a sort of balance. (The most popular — college level graph — is wrong and misleading as well):

[….]

The following graph includes all political models and better shows where the political beliefs lie e.g., left or right is the following (take note, this graph is from a book I do not support nor recommend… but these visual insights are very useful):

In actuality, during WWII, fascism grew out of socialism, showing how close the ties were. I would argue that the New Left that comprises much of the Democratic Party today is fascistic, or, at least, of a closer stripe than any conservative could ever hope to be. I will end with a model comparing the two forms of governance that the two core values (conservatism/classical liberalism versus a socialist democracy) will produce. Before you view the below though, keep in mind that a few years back the ASA (American Socialist Association) on their own web site said that according to the voting record of United States Congressmen and Women, that 58 of them were social democrats. These are the same that put Hitler and Mussolini in power.

…read more…

Rubio Blasts Jay-Z, Says His Hero (Che Guevara) ~ “White Supremacist”

Via Libertarian Republican:

One of his [JayZ’s] heroes is Che Guevara. Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself on the guy that he’s propping up.

“Secondly, I think if Jay-Z was truly interested in the true state of affairs in Cuba, he would have met people that are being oppressed, including a hip-hop artist in Cuba who is right now being oppressed and persecuted and is undergoing a hunger strike because of his political lyrics,” Rubio added.

“And I think he missed an opportunity. But that’s Jay-Z’s issue.”

A HIGHLY recommended book:

`Obama Misrepresenting My Work` ~ Princeton Professor Harvey Rosen (Plus: Eulogizing Killers)

…the United States is actually more dependent on rich people to pay taxes than even many of the more socialized economies of Europe. According to the Tax Foundation, the United States gets 45 percent of its total taxes from the top 10 percent of tax filers, whereas the international average in industrialized nations is 32 percent. America’s rich carry a larger share of the tax burden than do the rich in Belgium (25 percent), Germany (31 percent), France (28 percent), and even Sweden (27 percent). ~ Washington Times

To set the stage for lowering taxes and Mitt Romney’s tax plan — the rich… the American rich specifically, pay the most taxes when compared to the rest of the world

This lack of understanding by the left leads to how they fight and lie and misrepresent what Mitt Romney says and will even twist other peoples work to win the day:

Here is the Weekly Standard’s “blurb” of the Obama Campaign lie:

Last night, the Obama campaign blasted out another email claiming that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would either require raising taxes on the middle class or blowing a hole in the deficit. “Even the studies that Romney has cited to claim his plan adds up still show he would need to raise middle-class taxes,” said the Obama campaign press release. “In fact, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein and Princeton economist Harvey Rosen both concede that paying for Romney’s tax cuts would require large tax increases on families making between $100,000 and $200,000.”

But that’s not true. Princeton professor Harvey Rosen tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email that the Obama campaign is misrepresenting his paper on Romney’s tax plan:

I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work.  It might be that they assume that Governor Romney wants to keep the taxes from the Affordable Care Act in place, despite the fact that the Governor has called for its complete repeal.  The main conclusion of my study is that  under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same.  That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral.

Dennis Prager touched on the “wonderful eulogy” the New York Times gave the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, and how the left loves killers, dictators, and Communists. Here is the Wall Street Journals take on all this:

In 1987, Jean-Marie Le Pen called the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps “just a detail in the history of World War II.” Explaining himself a few years later, the head of France’s National Front said: “If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps take up only two pages and the gas chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail.”

Such remarks cemented Mr. Le Pen’s reputation as Europe’s leading fascist. So what was one to make of the reception accorded the publication, in 1994, of “The Age of Extremes,” by the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm?

The book—subtitled “a history of the world, 1914-1991″—was hailed as “bracing and magisterial” by the New York Times. “Facts roll off Hobsbawm’s pages like thunderbolts,” gushed the New Republic. But search the index, and the words “Holocaust” and “Auschwitz” never appear. Nazi concentration camps get about 10 or 15 lines. As for the Soviet gulags, Hobsbawm devoted exactly two paragraphs to them.

Hobsbawm, who died in London Monday at age 95, was no Holocaust denier. Nor was he ignorant of the human toll imposed by communism, the ideology to which he remained faithful nearly his whole life. He acknowledged that the victims of Stalin’s tyranny “must be measured in eight rather than seven digits,” adding that the numbers are “shameful and beyond palliation, let alone justification.”

Yet Hobsbawm did justify them. “Like military enterprises which have genuine popular moral legitimacy, the breakneck industrialization of [Stalin’s] first Five-Year Plans (1929-41) generated support by the very ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ it imposed on the people,” he wrote. “Difficult though it may be to believe, the Stalinist system . . . almost certainly enjoyed substantial support.”

The rest of the book is shot through with similar rationalizations. That included the observation that “for most Soviet citizens the Brezhnev era spelled not ‘stagnation’ but the best times they and their parents, or even grandparents, had ever known.” As for Soviet dissidents, they were “anti-plebeian” elitists who “found themselves up against Soviet humanity as well as Soviet bureaucracy.”

None of this should have been surprising coming from a man who, over the years, gave his political assent to everything from the Nazi-Soviet Pact to the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Asked by the BBC whether the achievement of a communist utopia would have justified “the loss of fifteen, twenty million people,” he answered “Yes.”

Yet what are we to make of the warmth with which Hobsbawm is now being eulogized? Only this: That the world is far from recognizing that the crimes of communism were no less monstrous than those of Nazism. In treating the gulag as a detail of his history, Hobsbawm proved himself to be the moral equivalent of Mr. Le Pen. And in treating Hobsbawm as a paragon among historians, his admirers prove they’ve learned nothing from history itself.