America's Top Cuban Expert And Her Must Reads

The island of Cuba has been a unique player on the international stage since the 1950s.

      Cuba's larger than life existence in the Caribbean and its closeness to the world superpower U. S. A., just 90 miles south of the Florida Keys, projects the island as a significant force in both America's history and America's topicality. One aspect of its uniqueness -- the reconstitution of the overthrown U. S. - backed Batista dictatorship on U. S. soil in January of 1959 -- has produced the most lasting impact on the U. S. democracy, revealing just how malleable and fragile it is. The reaffirmation of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in South Florida, Union City (NJ), and Washington (D.C.) has, arguably, been the most indelible and the most nefarious event in the history of the American democracy, which got its foundation in 1776. For that reason, I believe in the year 2013 Americans should not still be getting their daily doses of Cuban information from the reconstituted Batistianos who, for the most part, have a firm stranglehold on both the U. S. government and the U. S. media when it comes to Cuba.

      That backdrop brings me around to a lady named Julia E. Sweig. She knows more about Cuba and U. S. - Cuban relations than any living soul. Moreover, she is unbiased in dispensing information about those two topics. And that is precisely why, I believe, you will rarely see or hear her on biased, slanted, or politically correct Cable News, Talk Radio, etc. But if you want to know about the true history and topicality of Cuba and its relationship to the U. S., Ms. Sweig's incomparable insight is readily available. She is the Director of Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and that organization's Website highlights her incomparable expertise and insight. Her books are also excellent portraits of Cuba and its unique place in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the world.

     Julia Sweig's 2004 book "Inside the Cuban Revolution" remains the best source of information on how the female-powered urban underground paved the way for Fidel Castro to shock the world by becoming the first and only revolutionary to overthrow a U. S. - backed dictatorship.

    Julia Sweig's 2009 book "Cuba" indeed had the correct sub-title: "What Everyone Needs to Know." On April 15-2013 an updated book entitled "Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know" by Ms. Sweig will be published. I've already pre-ordered my copy from Amazon and so should you if you want the unvarnished truth about Cuba, including the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. For important and accurate information about Cuba, Julia Sweig is your prime source unless, of course, you prefer slanted, self-serving propaganda or hyperbole from self-serving sources, either pro or con.

     If you have the opportunity to see and hear Julia Sweig speak about Cuba, take advantage of it to compensate for the fact that you will rarely see her on television "news" shows...for the reason stated earlier. Of course, if the mainstream media such as the New York Times or the BBC want a history lesson on Cuba or topical data on the island they consult her. But it's also easy to read her Cuban updates on the "Council on Foreign Relations" Website. The latest major article penned by Ms. Sweig is entitled "The Post-Castro Era Is Today." With unique insight, she explains why that is so.

Above is one way birds stay warm on cold Virginia nights.

Yes, the nine siblings above are real ducklings loving the warm water.

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Past Support of Dictators Still Haunts America

The U. S. Atonement Is Overdue

      Amazon.com, the world's top book-seller, loves me. In the past few months I've bought and read nine hardback books -- all biographies. The one I just finished was Sissy Spacek's 2012 memoir "My Extraordinary Ordinary Life."

      Sissy Spacek's 1980 portrayal of Loretta Lynn in "Coal Miner's Daughter" won her the Oscar as "Best Actress" and crowned her rise to super-stardom in Hollywood. 

     In the past three decades Sissy Spacek has justifiably won many accolades and her new memoir is gripping. Of particular interest to me was her remembrance of going on location in Mexico in 1980 to film the movie "Missing." It was a pulsating movie set in Chile and was based on the 1973 U. S. - inspired overthrow of the democratically elected Salvador Allende whose death enabled the U. S. to install the murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet for the next 19 very bloody years. On Page 204 of her excellent memoir, Sissy Spacek wrote these words regarding her preparation for her leading role in that movie: "I have to admit I knew next to nothing about the political turmoil going on in South and Central America during the 1970s. But preparing for the movie was a quick education. I was shocked and disillusioned when I learned of our government's complicity in so much brutality and suffering." Sissy Spacek is a very intelligent and well educated American. And she grew up in a political setting in Texas; her grand-father was a dear friend of former President Lyndon Johnson. But it is not surprising to me that Sissy Spacek first learned of a monumental event -- the U. S. role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government in Chile to install the murderous but "U. S. Friendly" Dictator Pinochet -- accidentally as she studied for a movie role.

      General Pinochet was such a murderous fiend for almost two decades that he famously ordered the bloody murders of a Chilean diplomat and his beautiful American aide, Ronnie Moffet, within sound of the White House in Washington, D. C. in 1976. To this day Chile, like other Latin American nations, is still trying to come to grips with the ashes and bones left behind by "U. S. Friendly" dictators of decades past. Chile, for example, has begged key Americans such as Henry Kissinger (a renowned Pinochet-supporter) and George H. W. Bush (CIA Director in 1976) to provide their ongoing investigations with specific information and Chile has been rebuffed in those efforts. Such anti-democracy tendencies by the U. S. from the 1950s into the 1980s helped inspire the waves of democratic elections that finally swept over Latin America. The American democracy since the 1980s should have been strong enough that intelligent, well educated Americans like Sissy Spacek could have been told about the U. S. over-throwing beloved democratically elected Presidents like Allende to install killer dictators like Pinochet, especially when the justifications included allowing rich American businessmen to rape and rob helpless nations during the reigns of "U. S. - friendly" dictators, something they could not have done under  democratically elected  governments.

      Monuments and statues honoring the beloved Salvador Allende abound today throughout Latin America, especially in Chile and Cuba, but not in the United States.

The photo above shows the Salvador Allende Hospital in Havana, Cuba.

     Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro were dear friends. At the meeting above, Castro had just told Allende that the CIA was backing a coup to overthrow him. Shortly -- on Sept. 11, 1973 -- Allende died defending his presidential palace with the engraved AK-47 rifle that Fidel Castro had given him as an inaugural gift. Sissy Spacek and other Americans, I believe, have a right to know about such things...even if...it might cause them to ponder: The decent, democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was a dear friend of Fidel Castro; the murderous dictator Pinochet, who replaced Allende, was a dear friend of President Richard Nixon and his top adviser Henry Kissinger. Is there...something wrong with that picture? Yes, I think there is. I think Americans like Sissy Spacek have a right to know the truth about Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet, and why Chile to this day is still trying to come to grips with those dark days, without much help from classified U. S. data that could shed additional light on the events that gave rise to Pinochet's rule and longevity, putting an end to Chile's initial efforts to embrace democracy. 

     Sissy Spacek, for example, should finally hear from Henry Kissinger why he was so fond of General Pinochet and why he advised President Nixon that they could not accept the democratically elected Salvador Allende as President of Chile. Many democracy-lovers await Kissinger's explanation.

         The bloody, broken glasses above were the ones President Allende was wearing when he died in his office at Palacio de la Moneda in Santiago, Chile.  Latin Americans are much more attuned to the significance of those historic glasses than Americans are and that fact bespeaks of the glaring lack of transparency in the U. S. democracy, as Sissy Spacek alluded to in her splendid biography.

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Sen. Menendez Is America's Problem, Not Cuba's

Illustrates Failure Within U. S. Democracy

     The above photo by Doug Mills that depicts a concerned Senator Robert Menendez was used to illustrate a major article in the New York Times on Feb. 1-2013. It was entitled: "Senator Has Long Ties to Donor Under Scrutiny. The revelation saw the light of day this past week when the FBI raided the offices of an extremely wealthy Miami eye surgeon, Dr. Salomon E. Melgen. The New York Times reported, "Dr. Melgen...has always been happy to help out his friend, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey." Then the Times explained how Sen. Menendez has returned the favors with Senate bills that reward Dr. Melgen in his dealings with the Dominican Republic. It turns out that Sen. Menendez, conveniently, "is Chairman of the Senate subcommittee that holds sway over the Dominican Republic" and that, with such power, Sen. Menendez, for example, "subsequently urged officials in the State and Commerce Departments to intervene so the contract would be enforced, at an estimated value of $500 million." The "contract" was one involving the Dominican Republic that vastly enriched Dr. Melgen's fortune that, in turn, has richly backed Sen. Menendez's political career. Menendez, the former Mayor of the Cuban-exile bastion of Union City, New Jersey, was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1993 from that district. He was then appointed to the U. S. Senate before being elected as an incumbent, with Dr. Melgen's hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds helping to explain how and why incumbents are almost unbeatable in the upper realms of the U. S. democracy. When it comes to the Dominican Republic and Sen. Menendez, even the Dominican Republic's own government is overwhelmed. The NY Times article pointed out that the $500 million largess for Dr. Melgen was described by Miguel Cocco as "an exorbitant giveaway" to Dr. Melgen.  {Cocco was the Dominican Republic's Customs Director who tried but failed to block the deal} The NY Times pointed out that the close ties between Sen. Menendez and Dr. Melgen "go back to the 1990s" when they spent holidays together at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic where Dr. Melgen has a home in the "gated oceanfront resort where houses cost as much as $20 million." The NY Times says that "a super PAC" known as Majority PAC "poured $582,500 into New Jersey to support Mr. Menendez's re-election effort. One of the organization's biggest donors? Dr. Melgen's company, which donated $700,000 between June and October." The problem with such nefarious out-of-state money re-electing people like Senator Menendez in a district in the state of New Jersey is this: Once in the U. S. Congress, they can then make laws that affect people adversely in all 50 states, not to mention innocent people in other countries, such as Cuba or the Dominican Republic. The NY Times article included this sentence: "In Florida political circles, one Miami Democrat explained, it is understood that anyone seeking a federal appointment that requires Mr. Menendez's blessing should first get Dr. Melgen's backing. 'If you needed Bob, you had to see Melgen,' said the Democrat. 'Everybody in Miami knew that.'" Wow! A bit startling but not exactly a revelation to anyone who has the slightest knowledge of what the NY Times called "Florida political circles" or what is commonly referred to as "hardline Cuban exiles running amok and generally unchallenged in business or politics." 

         The above photo of Sen. Menendez -- by Alex Wong/Getty Images -- illustrated a Los Angeles Times article on Feb. 1-2013 that blared this headline: "Sen. Robert Menendez Under Growing Scrutiny Over Ethics Questions." This article indicated that a Dominican Republic contract benefiting Melgen and urged by Sen. Menendez was worth up to "$1 billion." The LA Times ended its long article with this sentence: "A review of records shows Menendez has at times used his role on the Foreign Relations Committee to advocate for Melgen." No kidding. But perhaps the first two sentences of the LA Times article is even more scary: "Sen. Robert Menendez, the powerful New Jersey Democrat who this week was named chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is facing a Senate ethics probe...the review comes on the heels of an FBI raid on Melgen's medical offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday night and Wednesday as part of an investigation into what sources called possible Medicaid fraud." USA Today has had front-page articles revealing South Florida as the "epicenter" and "ground zero" for Medicare fraud, prescription-pill fraud, etc., that costs all Americans dearly. And so, this very week Sen. Menendez becomes the "Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." And guess what? Foreign Relations include the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

         And guess what? Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami -- another Bush-ordained Cuban-American -- has served a long stint as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the other congressional chamber, the House of Representatives! Born in Havana, she has been a member of the U. S. Congress since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager. The U. S. Congress consists of just two chambers, with radical anti-Castro Cuban-Americans holding the Foreign Relations Chairmanships on both sides of the aisle! Now you ask, "Can things possibly get any worse?"

Yes! If Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio capture the White House in 2016 as some predict!!!

  

         So, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen has been around for decades and thus must have a huge collection of pens, like the one above, that she gets as souvenirs commemorating the most stringent anti-Cuban legislation signed into law by the Bush dynasty. I personally would not care if every chairmanship in the U. S. Congress and every chair in the Oval Office were held by Cuban-Americans but I would prefer Cuban-Americans other than those anointed by the Bush dynasty.

            Or...Cuban-Americans not propped up by extremely rich men like Saloman Melgen {left} from South Florida using ungodly amounts of apparently ill-gotten money to fund the political campaigns of people like Sen. Menendez {right} in another state. Such schemes circumvent the democratic process in which voters from Menendez's own district should predicate the election without the interference of bushels of outside money, a situation not allowed by any other pro-democracy nation. Melgen and Menendez, in other words, help explain why the approval rating of Congress languishes in the single digits but yet it is almost impossible to vote them out of office!

Thus, we can expect more Melgens and Menendezes!

       The democracy-loving Sarah Stephens {above) is the Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. Her Cuba Central column this week stated:

        "In public, Senator Bob Menendez is never a shy skeptic about certain kinds of travel. He bitterly opposed reforms in 2009 to allow Cuban Americans unfettered travel rights to Cuba, and later teamed up with Senator Marco Rubio to oppose opening up people-to-people travel for most other Americans. When the Center for Democracy in the Americas was organizing a Cuba trip for Senate chiefs of staff, he...warned all of their colleagues not to allow their staffs to go. At John Kerry;s confirmation hearing, he scolded Senator Jeff Flake, who joked about using 'spring break' to disrupt the Cuban government's hold on the island. Like other hardliners, Menendez suggested that travel to Cuba was about little more than sexual tourism, as he did in his speech against Cuban American family travel four years ago. Had Senator Menendez heeded his publicly expressed doubts about travel in private, he might not be in the hot water he finds himself today. His story has moved swiftly from a lurid set of accusations. According to NBC News, the raid ostensibly 'concerned a separate criminal probe conducted by the FBI and the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, which typically investigates Medicare fraud. However, agents were also looking for evidence in the other case concerning the alleged under-aged prostitutes' and two airplane rides Menendez and Melgen took to the Dominican Republic."

          In other words, Americans concerned about their democracy should tune out the likes of Fox News and tune in truthful sources such as the Center for Democracy in the Americas.

         And in other words, Sen. Menendez is against the freedom to travel for others but not for himself. His office admits he took two illegal trips to and from the Dominican Republic on jets owned by Melgen. Whether or not the trips involved prostitution with under-aged Dominican Republic girls, as various sources including the Miami New Times are alleging, they were illegal because Sen. Menendez did not report them or pay for them as required by Senate rules. After the quid pro quo scandal broke, Sen. Menendez wrote Mr. Melgen a check for just under $60,000 to pay for those airplane trips to the Dominican Republic. But the Melgen stain is one the Senator can't wash out.

        This week's Menendez-Melgen-Dominican Republic saga reminds Cuban watchers that two of the most visceral anti-Castro haters were Richard Nixon and Rafael Trujillo. The photo above shows Nixon lovingly reminding Trujillo how much Washington loved and appreciated him. At the time, of course, Trujillo was in the midst of his three-decades run as the brutal, thieving dictator of the Dominican Republic. Before and after he supported the U. S./Cuban-exile Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba in April of 1961, Trujillo himself had tried to overthrow the Cuban Revolution and on at least three well-known times sent agents to Cuba to kill Fidel Castro. Countless magazines and books, then and now, have documented just how brutal Trujillo was. He once famously murdered about 22,000 Haitian men, women, and children on a whim. That atrocity alarmed all of the Caribbean and Latin American nations, but not Trujillo's prime supporter, the United States. In fact, the official U. S. reaction to the uproar caused by the murders of the Haitians produced one of history's most famous quotes.

      Cordell Hull {above} was the U. S. Secretary of State when Trujillo murdered the Haitians. Hull's official reaction is recorded for history: "Trujillo is a son-of-a-bitch. But he's our son-of-a-bitch." And so he was. People throughout the Caribbean and Latin America still cringe when they are reminded of that quotation, and many of them were reminded of it this week as they learned about the Dominican Republic connection to the Menendez-Melgen saga. The problem, however, is: Americans don't seem to care enough about their democracy to cringe at even the most egregious anti-democracy policies of their government. For example, Americans seem not quite smart enough to ponder: "Uh, let's see. The U. S. supported fiends like Trujillo, who hated Castro. The U. S. teamed with the Mafia to support the fiendish Batista, and both the Mafia and Batista hated Castro. Uh, what if Castro and not the U. S. was aligned with Trujillo, Batista, the Mafia, and other such fiends. Huh? Now, hey! If we could tie Castro to the likes of Trujillo, Batista, and the Mafia...then...uh, huh...we could, uh, send over a, uh, drone to fix him for, uh, good!" Such a lack of "smarts" hurts a lot of people, including innocents in places like Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and...the United States of America.

Cuba and the USA are next-door neighbors.

And the bible says the mighty wolf doesn't have to devour the little lamb.

On a gentler topic, the little guy above is the prettiest bird I've seen this week.

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U.S.-Friendly Dictatorships Have Lasting Effects

A Few Benefit, the Majority Suffer

       In the last week of January, 2013, ESPN featured a very detailed investigative report on Major League Baseball's massive concern related to South Florida's uniquely permissive illegal drug enterprises, especially involving prescription drugs. The huge article's headline: "MLB Investigating South Florida as 'Ground Zero' on PED War." The first paragraph: "Major League Baseball is investigating multiple wellness clinics in South Florida, as well as individuals with potential ties to players, armed with the belief that the region stretching 50 miles south from Boca Raton to Miami is 'ground zero' for performance-enhancing drugs still filtering into the game." The article goes on to name the prime baseball players and the "pill mills" connected to this ongoing scourge and outrage. 

       The Major League baseball teams join a long, long list of American enterprises and individuals that have suffered and continue to suffer massively from the unique Banana Republic that emerged in South Florida after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January of 1959 when it defeated the U. S. - backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba. It seems innocent generations to come will also suffer.

      Mariana Van Zeller was born 37 years ago in Portugal. Today she is America's best and bravest investigative documentarian. She is a multiple Peabody Award Winner and currently works for National Geographic Channel. In 2009 her superb and courageous documentary entitled "The OxyContin Express" acutely revealed how South Florida's Pill Mills were the "Gateway to Heroin" but she also stated, "Prescription drug addition is killing more people than cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin combined." And quite profoundly, Ms. Van Zeller pointed out that South Florida is "The Colombia of prescription drugs." Unfortunately, South Florida is many other things too, mostly regrettable things.

        A simple "OxyContin Express" Google search will quickly take you to that documentary by Mariana Van Zeller. It has been viewed millions of times world-wide but Americans, programmed to accept the U. S. support of the Batista regime in Cuba in the 1950s and subsequently conditioned to accept the reconstitution of that dictatorship on U. S soil in South Florida, have also been programmed and conditioned to ignore how the Batista dictatorship in Cuba shamed the U. S. democracy and how South Florida's Banana Republic harms Americans who have never been within 1,000 miles of South Florida. Van Zeller left the Pill Mills in South Florida to check out small towns in Kentucky, Ohio, Massachusetts....! Typically, she interviewed a sheriff in tears because his dedicated force was not big enough or strong enough to protect its citizens from the drug traffickers who drove to South Florida and returned with the devastating pills capable of destroying towns or small cities.

South Florida remains on U. S. maps and Florida has a whopping 29 electoral votes.

Thus, since 1989, the United States Congress has been overwhelmed by visceral Cuban-exiles.

       For decades, powerful Cuban-born exiles aligned with the Bush dynasty have dictated American laws -- The Torricelli Bill, The Helms-Burton Law, etc. -- that have massively benefited only the most radical Cuban exiles and their sycophants such as the Bush dynasty but massively harmed everyone else, including America's best foreign friends by also punishing them for involvements with Cuba.

 The U. S. democracy, while always challenged, has been the greatest government ever devised.

    The biggest challenge to the U. S. democracy came in the 1950s when Uncle Sam began to support and even install foreign dictators such as...Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Videla in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, Mobutu in Zaire-Congo, Pahlavi in Iran, etc. 

     The Cuban Revolution, from 1952-1959, is unique in the annals of American history for three reasons: (1) It was the only revolution to overthrow a U. S. - backed dictatorship; (2) it marks the only time in American history that an ousted foreign dictatorship was permitted to reconstitute itself on U. S. soil; and (3) it represents the first time in American history that the American people either refused or were unable or unwilling to defend their precious democracy against a mammoth challenge.

Not exactly the democracy envisioned by America's Founding Fathers.

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How Fidel Castro Reshaped the U. S. Democracy

And Even Nascar Auto Racing!

     Danica Patrick, featured above in one of her Sports Illustrated photos, is surely one of America's most beautiful, most intriguing, and most famous women.

      Danica Patrick -- famed for her looks, her gender, her athletic prowess and her ubiquitous "Go Daddy" Super Bowl commercials -- is America's beloved darling on the very popular NASCAR auto racing circuit. Recently divorced, it was revealed this week that Danica...Stop the presses!...has a new boyfriend!

      The lucky guy is Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who will be racing against girlfriend Danica Patrick in the upcoming Nascar season! Wow!! A fantastic pre-season promotional story, right? Yeah, sure, but...it, of course, has to compete with the latest and even more topical anti-Fidel Castro obsession in the U. S. media!

        And so, you ask, "What in the hell does Fidel Castro have to do with "Auto Week" and with "Living the Automotive Life" in the United States. That, of course, is such a sane and sensible question that you, as an American, are not supposed to ask it!" Instead, you are supposed to accept without question anything revengeful, self-serving Cuban exiles, or their sycophants, say about Fidel Castro. It's been that way since 1959 when Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution chased the U. S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship to U. S. soil. In 2013, the year the 86-year-old, very ill and frail Fidel Castro is likely to die, that is still the way it is. And for decades to come, still battling what will be the burgeoning Fidel Castro legacy, that is the way it will also be...confronting your great-grandchildren!

       And so, my fellow Americans, what was the major headline in America's major auto magazine and website on Jan. 25-2013, just ahead of the juicy revelation about Danica Patrick's new boyfriend who also happens to be a racing rival? The correct answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind and it is this: "Fidel Castro 'Should Be Dead,' Says Nascar Team Owner Felix Sabates!" I...kid...you...not!

       The above SAT Photographic photo shows Felix Sabates, on the left, with fellow Nascar big-wig Chip Ganassi. It illustrated the Jan. 25-2013 Auto Week article written by Al Pearce. The article begins: "Felix Sabates fled Cuba in 1959, when he was just 17. He became rich and somewhat famous in America, primarily as a NASCAR team owner. Now 70, Sabates hates Fidel Castro and his regime, and fears nothing will change when the ailing dictator dies. 'He's pretty much been out of the picture for 10 years,' Sabates said during the NASCAR media tour in Charlotte. 'His brother and his cronies and his wife run the country. The only way you're gonna change Cuba is get rid of 40 people, then you have a chance.' Sabates said he's surprised Castro is alive, given that the 86-year-old dictator was diagnosed seven years ago with pancreatic cancer. 'The chance of him still being alive with that happening is one in 28 billion,' he said. 'I think they shot and killed somebody down there, took out the pancreas and liver, and all those organs...and put them inside Castro. I mean, the SOB should be dead, but he's still alive. So some poor guy in Cuba gave up his life so Castro could live.'" Did he say, "one in 28 billion?" Yes, he absolutely did!

       Felix Sabates is a very wealthy man. Before venturing into NASCAR racing, he owned the NBA franchise in New Orleans in addition to numerous non-sports businesses.

     His parents were extremely wealthy in Batista's Cuba...garnering their Cuban wealth in "insurance, sugar, cattle, service stations, and pharmacies" according to his Wikipedia profile. Also, as with almost all of the primary Cuban-exile power-brokers, Sabates has been intricately aligned with the Bush political dynasty that, to date, includes George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Jeb Bush with, among others, two of Jeb's sons now looming ominously on the horizon. Sabates told Auto Week that "the only way you're gonna change Cuba is get rid of 40 people." But isn't that what the ultra-powerful and incredibly rich Cuban exiles, the CIA, and the Mafia have been trying to do every day since January 1, 1959? Sabates also told Auto Week that the chance of Fidel Castro still being alive "is one in 28 billion." Huh? The odds against Fidel Castro defeating Fulgencio Batista -- considering Batista was supported by the United States, the Mafia, and the Communist Party of Cuba -- were also "one in 28 billion." The reconstitution of the Batista dictatorship on U. S. soil also created this ramification:

The odds against the U. S. media telling the truth about Fidel Castro is 28 billion to one!

         The Cuban Revolution is a major event in the annals of history because of its impact on the world's superpower, the United States, and not just because it reconfigured things on an island, which happened to be Cuba. Therefore, this week's Auto Week article didn't say anything about autos, or even this week's gripping Danica Patrick update, because it was too busy detailing the usual, since 1959, Cuban-exile venom regarding the 86-year-old Fidel Castro. Typically, such articles in the U. S. media never mention the other side of a pulsating two-sided story, a story that  says far more about the U. S. democracy than it is says about Cuba. Thus, Auto Week this week rapturously informs Americans that an innocent soul was murdered in Cuba so his "pancreas and liver, and all those organs" could be transplanted in Fidel Castro to keep the old revolutionary alive. 

The sad thing, for the U. S. democracy, is:

Americans are supposed to believe such exaggerations;

And many Americans do exactly that,

Because it is politically correct and somewhat healthier to do so. 
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Varadero Beach, Cuba! Have You Ever Been There?

I Have! And In Frosty January I'd Like to Return!

Varadero Beach in Cuba has often been called the Most Beautiful Beach in the World!

Today -- January 25-2013 -- it's very cold and quite snowy outside my Virginia home!

But at Varadero Beach, Cuba, it's warm, sunny, and gorgeous!

Now...Where Is My Passport?

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