Does this mean the guy on the left is out, also?

For a good Hollywood leftist that, for half a century now, has been rationalizing Cuban human rights abuses because everyone gets free dental check-ups... now what?

Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.

The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother Raul, the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

He said Castro made the comment casually over lunch following a long talk about the Middle East, and did not elaborate. The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Goldberg's account.

No doubt a three-martini lunch, lefties, where perhaps Fidel was getting a little sloppy and might have misspoke. But as they say, In vino veritas.

But let not your heart be troubled, oh intrepid Hollywood gulag apologists. Fidel's brother and current president, Raul Castro is putting his own twist on a truism we've come to know and love around here and that is: The statist's solution to failed statist policies is simply the same statist policies.

President Raul Castro and others have instituted a series of limited economic reforms, and have warned Cubans that they need to start working harder and expecting less from the government. But the president has also made it clear he has no desire to depart from Cuba's socialist system or embrace capitalism.

"...start working harder and expecting less from the government." aka, pretty much the exact opposite of the Obama administration's governing philosophy.

When you run out of "rights"...

From a paper titled, "Freedom and Exchange in Communist Cuba" by Yoani Sanchez for the Cato Institute (H/T: Carpe Diem):

"An increasing number of Cubans are disillusioned with socialism and are demanding change. One of the tools that Cubans are now using to recover their freedom of expression and association is the Internet, which has quickly given rise to a community of cyber-dissidents, despite the Cuban government’s efforts to make Internet use difficult. Now that the state is out of money and there are no more rights to exchange for benefits, the demand for freedom is on the rise.

(italics, ours)

That nails it. Not the internet part but the "rights" part. Cubans are finding out that simply declaring everything a "right" (employment, health care, education, etc.) has not resulted in an improvement in their quality of life and surely hasn't resulted in an increase in freedom.

When you run out of "rights" to bestow upon yourself, the "struggle" loses quite a bit of its sex appeal and your country is left figuring out just how it's going to pay for all those "rights". Will we have to descend to third-world status before we figure out what the Cubans are figuring out?

Pie chart image of the day

heh



H/T: The Corner

Quotes of the week

We were used as kind of a political football during the campaign. We obviously would cover these negotiations. The only time we’ve been allowed to cover the White House part of it is one hour inside the East Room, which was just a show-horse type of thing…

The American people pay for all of this that goes on in this town. It’s always been my contention…that if we pay for something, and it’s the public’s business, we ought to be able to see how it’s done. It’s just that simple, it has nothing to do with this particular fight right now.

- C-SPAN'S Brian Lamb on the "transparency" of the healthcare debate.

“Of course, nobody can see the managers’ amendment. It is composed of over 40 amendments. How could anyone vote for a piece of legislation such as that — a managers’ amendment with 42 separate amendments? Now, these amendments were not put in a conference committee. People complain about that. But at least in a conference committee, you have people working together, sticking things in…Here, you have one person making a decision as to what is going to be in the managers’ amendment. There is no way to know what is in it.”

- Harry Reid in 2006 railing against informal deal-making that circumvented the committee process and attacking the use of manager's amendments to avoid public scrutiny.

"President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He's made a lot of commission's members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations."

- 9/11 Commission member and former Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, on the mirandizing of counter-terrorism.

"Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy -- these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history," Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

"Stalin has a complete other story," Stone said. "Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect ... People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII ... I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view. We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."

- Castro and Chavez-coddler, Oliver Stone, on his upcoming Showtime miniseries documentary "Secret History of America". What could possibly go wrong?

"Freedom" is in the eye of the beholder

Having said that, I'm a proud American and infinitely aware that if I were a Cuban citizen and were to write an article such as this about the Cuban leadership, I could be jailed. Furthermore, I'm proud that the system set up by our founding fathers, while not exactly intact today, was never dependent on just one great leader per epoch. These things remain in question for the romantic heroes of Cuba and Venezuela. I consider mentioning this, and perhaps should have, but I've got something else on my mind.

So concludes the money paragraph towards the end of an article in The Nation from Sean Penn from this past November. An article for which we wasted 20 minutes of our life which we will never get back as after 4 days of kissing Hugo Chavez’s and Raul Castro’s asses he finally gets around to asking really the only question that matters with respect to free vs. authoritarian/totalitarian societies but doesn’t because …. he has something else on his mind?

Then again, what would one expect from a man who has fashioned himself as a spokesperson for gay rights but is either ignorant of history or willfully dismissive as it doesn’t quite fit the narrative of his current mission?

Here's the history Penn ignores, courtesy of journalist James Kirchick: “Not long after the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro ordered the internment of gay people in prison labor camps, where they were murdered or worked to death for their 'counterrevolutionary tendencies.' Over the gate of one of these camps were the words 'Work Will Make Men Out of You,' an eerie homage to the welcome sign at Auschwitz instructing Jews on their way to the gas chambers that 'Work Will Make You Free.' ...

“Raul Castro was notorious for ordering the summary execution of ... people whose only crime was their homosexuality.”

We suppose that for people like Sean Penn, “freedom” is just a matter of context.

Define Revolution

We’re kind of surprised it took this long but now after “The Motorcycle Diaries”, the Che’ floodgates have been opened. Steven Soderbergh’s two-part Che’ biopic, “The Argentinian” and “Guerilla”, played at Cannes and “Chevolution”, a look at the mass marketing of the iconic Che’ image have been making the festival rounds… no word on when they are showing at your local suburban multiplex – check your local listings.

As “The Motorcycle Diaries” focused on the pre-Cuba Che’, Soderbergh’s movies will be the first to depict Che’ as what this article calls “the legendary Argentinian-doctor-cum-internationalist-revolutionary.” It is noted, they neglected, “Head of Cuban Prison System”, “Castro’s strong-man”, “murderer”, “common thug” and “most-likely rapist”… hey, if the Left can gloss over some inconvenient truths about their man then certainly we can take some dramatic license with his life and accomplishments, as well.

Anyway, so what are we to make of the marketing of Che’ and the supposed irony of Che’ being co-opted in total by capitalism? Are we to take some solace that his Maoist reputation has been permanently soiled by the taint of green (the other “green”) or should it trouble us further that his “brand” which ultimately represents the restriction of free trade and commerce and repressions of liberty, thought and speech, has gone Main Street?

Frankly, it’s a lot of both so we remain torn. We love the fact that “Che’” has become the ultimate sell-out and Madison Avenue shill but we remain discouraged that through the years and with increasing frequency and vigor his actions and motives have been entirely glossed-over and worse, hailed as virtuous.

So until such time when we can come up with an equally market-viable and intellectually and morally empty response to all that is Brand Che’ we offer only, “Revolution..? We got your Revolution right here, pal.”. Oi!

A Flip-Flop or mere Pandering?

Obama’s speech back on May 23 to the Cuban-American Founddation (CANF) in Miami contained a noticeable policy shift in his Cuba/Castro policy. We had noted previously, Obama’s skepticism of this country’s Cuban trade embargo, a skepticism which we share so it was a little surprising that no one in the media has yet to really pick up on Obama’s commitment to the status quo:

“I will maintain the embargo,” he said to cheers from CANF members. “It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: if you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations. That’s the way to bring about real change in Cuba—through strong, smart and principled diplomacy.”

In fact, his speech that took on other subjects specific to Latin American policy, including Columbia and Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, was about as hawkish as we’ve heard. Then again, this was the decidedly anti-Castro/anti-communist CANF he was speaking to so one never knows whether the inner-Reagan in him was awakened or he was just slingin’ around the red meat. We strongly suspect the latter.

H/T: Reason.tv

Wanted: Photogenic Reader

Cable News Anchor? Honestly, how hard could it be? Your face is airbrushed for a full two hours before going on-air, you get to read from a teleprompter and if you can’t come up with anything "fair and balanced" to say while reading the news, corporate is more than happy to oblige in ginning-up the talking points.

Case in point: CNN felt compelled to issue a memo to assist their people in the coverage of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s stepping down from his position as President-for-life. Full story here. Excerpt of same:

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* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

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* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.

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* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States. Any questions, please call the international desk.

Please…..? Please…..? And this international (“help”) desk…. Will Raul will be patched-in from Cuba to help fill-in any gaps?

Our favorite part of this memo is in the first bullet: “… in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.” The point CNN makes is not that the son of a bitch actually did oppress his people, mind you, but that he was merely criticized for it. Unbelievable.

Then there’s the issue of the reasoning behind this memo…. like CNN anchors needed to be reminded of their official Castro policy? As if it has not been seared into their very DNA by mere repetition?

But far beyond any bias that is exhibited, what really stuns us regarding the conduct of news outlets these days is the absence of sophistication and the complete lack of critical self-awareness. The kind of self-conscious behavior to where the author of this memo finishes writing it, gets up to go for a walk or grab a bite to eat, comes back to his office to proof-read it and in doing so, smacks his head saying, “What the hell am I thinking?”

Again, a memo like this is evidentiary of a herd mentality that does not possess the ability for introspection or objective analysis… and they wonder why they lose viewers and readership.