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That's a little ... naive or simplistic or something. Enver Hoxha would've been happy to welcome you to beautiful, Stalinist Albania well into the '80s.
Stalinism didn't die with Stalin, I'm pretty sure, any more than Marxism did with Marx, Leninism with Lenin, Trotskyism with Trotsky, Maoism with Mao or Mongoosism with me.
Oh, wait -- I'm still alive.
(Not that I view Castro as Stalinist in any way, shape or form. For that matter, not that I view Ozzie Guillen as anything but a loudmouthed idiot who nonetheless should not have been suspended for hurting the feelings of a bunch of monomaniacal lunatics in the Miami area.)
I was thinking of repressive communist systems that had the support of Moscow. On a technical note, East Germany did not border the Soviet Union either, althouhg the Red Army did occupy the land. It is also intersting to recall that the borders of Hungary and Czechoslovakia were altered in 1945 specifically to ensure that the USSR shared a border with both.
Julio or John?
Franco never should have written that book.
FTFY, MCoA. And one can wonder whether even that would have been accurate if the Republican side had won a few more battles.
History as it was played out in Spain favors Matt's reading of the facts, but that doesn't mean that Jason's speculation is groundless. George Orwell witnessed first hand the atrocities of the Stalinists in Catalonia, and there's no reason to believe that in the wake of a Republican victory we wouldn't have seen that sort of thing duplicated on a much larger scale. It's one of the countless number of "what would have happened?" questions that can never be answered, but the growing Stalinist influence in the Republic by the end of the war is scarcely a controversial question. What we can't answer is whether or not such a puppet government would have conducted atrocities on a grander scale than Franco, or whether other Stalin's other geopolitical considerations might have made them to scale back and allow a more "moderate" form of "socialism" to prevail.
P.S. Just to be clear, I'm talking about the Republican government in the last stages of the war. My views on this are independent of my views of the war against the Spanish government that was waged by the Falangists and their clerical supporters from the first days of the Republic, when the question of Stalinist domination wasn't an issue. And in some ways, many of the later barbarisms committed against the Church were brought about by the prior actions of the Church itself.
Opus Dei, for instance.
I wouldn't call either of them "Stalinist," which is the term I was responding to. Stalinism died in 1953 with Stalin himself; Castro didn't even come to power until 1959.
"Stalinist" is a much-overused and hyperbolized term (e.g. "Stalinist" congressional investigations into steroids, etc.), but in the case of Castro's Cuba and the Sandinistas' Nicaragua there are simply too many parallels between internal rule within those two countries and internal rule in the USSR to dismiss the description offhand. Neighborhood watch committees are perhaps the most obvious parallel examples, but beyond that, their use of Orwellian language is the surest giveaway.
True that - Pavelic and the Ustase are definite peak candidates for barbarism and brutality... Pavelic ought to be added to that tally of fascist death tolls -- IIRC, the number was somewhere in the 3-400k range. As either Pavelic or Milo Budak said "We kill 1/3 of the Serbs, deport another 1/3, and convert the last 1/3 to Catholocism".
Even Himmler, I believe, had written about the need to coral the Croats. When the Nazi true believers think you've gone too far...
I'm not a Guillen defender by any means, but we do also have to remember that English is not his first language. He deservedly gets a lot of crap for a lot of stuff that he does, but I don't think picking apart a transcript is really fair to him.
It's quite simple, actually.
1. Petty tantrum throwing because he's had the audacity to survive against Our Glorious Wishes.
2. The politics of the Cuban exile vote.
Everyone with a functional brain knows the embargo is stupid, pointless and should be eliminated. No one has the political courage to take the risk associated with doing the very obviously right thing, because there's not upside politically to doing it. The US's Cuba policy is the foreign policy equivalent to the US's "war on drugs."
We are all residents of the prison colony called Earth. Ha, take that!
Everyone with a functional brain knows there's no true embargo in the first place. Cuban-Americans have been pumping over a billion dollars per year into Cuba for decades, Americans now travel to the island with impunity, and the U.S. is Cuba's biggest foreign food source. That's hardly an "economic blockade," as Castro calls it.
Since Cuba has no real industry of note, all the embargo does is forbid the importation of Cuban cigars and forbid U.S. banks from making high-risk loans to Cuba that Cuba would likely never repay anyway. (See, e.g., Cuba's long list of stiffed creditors, from Europe to the Americas to Asia.)
The embargo provides political propaganda for Castro, but it doesn't do much economic harm. As I've said before, the entire rest of the world has been trading with Cuba for the last 50 years, but it hasn't brought liberty or prosperity to Cubans.
And if not, why not?
pp. xxvii-xxviii (Emphasis mine.)
pp. 431-32
There was no defense because there's no blockade. It's been weakened to the point of being a fiction. A true embargo of Cuba would forbid all trade, all remittances, and all tourist travel, but none of these things have been true for decades.
Castro controls Cuba's media, so anything that happens will get spun to his favor either way. The embargo is a propaganda tool now ("The imperialists are oppressing Cuba!"), and lifting the embargo would also be a propaganda tool ("The imperialists admit defeat!"). Given that, I don't see any reason for the U.S. to be the first mover, especially while Fidel Castro is still alive. I'd be more inclined to support lifting the embargo after Fidel and/or Raul die, when doing so can't be claimed as a victory by those two and when there's liable to be some larger momentum for change in Cuba.
Beyond that, I'd only favor lifting the embargo if strict laws remained in effect with regards to financial transactions with Cuba. For example, the agriculture lobby has been pushing for years for Uncle Sam to guarantee huge loans to Cuba so Cuba can buy even more U.S. agricultural products. (Currently, Cuba can buy as much as it wants from U.S. farmers, but it must pay in advance.) But given that Cuba has stiffed just about every country with which it has traded in recent years, I don't believe U.S. taxpayers should be on the hook as guarantors of loans to the Castro regime. Ditto for the U.S. gov't and bank loans.
This is a pretty good encapsulation of the paranoid, insular right wing mind in action.
Nonsense. There's no independent media in Cuba. The closest it has is blogger Yoani Sanchez, who gets watched more closely than Cuba's top baseball players and boxers.
This is true, but I don't see how you can argue that the restrictions on travel don't hurt the Cuban economy. Aside from the obvious one, the big problem in Cuba in terms of wealth generation (where they are versus where they should be) is that they should be rolling in tourist dollars at the resorts and casinos. A full lift of the travel restrictions would make a big difference in that respect.
I agree with some of your larger points regarding the fact that Cuba can trade with just about everyone else and how a formal embargo lift will be spun- but I don't think you can make a legitimate economic argument that the restrictions on American travel haven't had a substantial impact on the Cuban economy. You can have fun laughing at how "The Revolution" is fully dependent on its "imperialist" neighbors for survival- until you find out what it is doing to supplement that loss of income- but the travel restrictions take a serious bite out of the Cuban economy. I don't see how you can avoid that reality.
One thing: has the full text ever been translated into English, or is only the abridged edition available? That seems ridiculous on its face, given that Beevor had to have composed it in English. And yet all I can find is the "The Battle for Spain" (this is the new update of the original 1982 book), in an English-language version that people are saying is abridged from the Spanish one.
A fact that has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand.
Beyond all of that, it's more theory than anything else to say that Cuba is losing big money on U.S. tourist travel, because (1) Americans have been able to travel to Cuba at almost no risk for 20 years, and (2) Cuba simply doesn't have much, if any, excess hotel capacity. It's not like Cuban resorts are sitting empty because the world's tourists are staying away. Aside from all of the Americans and Cuban-Americans, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Canadians, Mexicans, and Europeans travel to Cuba each year. Even if the embargo ended tomorrow, it would likely take five to 10 years before Cuba could substantially increase its tourist capacity.
A government's total control of the media has nothing to do with its ability to disseminate propaganda? That's a curious claim.
Cuba's media options have zero to do with the case for or against the US embargo against Cuba.
My understanding is that when you travel, there are all sorts of practical restrictions on how you can spend money. Those restrictions make it less than ideal as a resort destination. Is that not so?
Cuba simply doesn't have much, if any, excess hotel capacity.
They don't have excess anything, except for 12 years olds being pimped out to foreign tourists in order to support their economy. As you note, they also have, uh, credit problems. But, if Americans could freely travel back and forth to Cuba- and spend freely while doing so- that would obviously make Havana a more attractive investment opportunity and an increase in hotel rooms would follow. Your point about the lag is fair, but that doesn't negate the overall point.
To be clear, I'm not saying that once restrictions are gone, Cuba's problems go away. That won't happen until "The Revolution" is over. But the restrictions stifle travel and investment and therefore hurt the economy. It might be fair to say it wouldn't matter anyway given what a sorry cluster#### the place has become, but I still don't think you can credibly argue that the travel restrictions aren't a big anchor on the Cuban economy. Unlike Canada and Europe, we are loaded and right next door, the fact that we can't visit as we normally would is a substantial loss.
You quoted a comment about Cuba's media in #320. I guess you were just trolling, as per usual.
The whole thing is silly anyway, given that the embargo mostly exists in name only. It's not like Cuba is chock full of foreign-owned hotels, stores, restaurants, etc., and U.S. companies have been missing out. The embargo ended 20 years ago, but no one seemed to notice.
***
From the U.S. side, mostly just in theory. U.S.-based credit cards won't work in Cuba, but they accept greenbacks, euros, etc.
From the Cuban side, spending money is limited to typical tourist expenses (hotels, meals, etc.). Foreigners can't buy property, open businesses, etc., which is unlikely to change if the embargo was formally lifted.
Americans already can freely travel back and forth to Cuba. It's technically still illegal for people who don't have family in Cuba, aren't in the media, etc., but a person has to try hard to get caught. Cuba doesn't stamp U.S. passports, so the U.S. has no real way of knowing if you've been to Cuba or not.
As for Havana being an "attractive investment opportunity," that would require a wholesale shift on the part of the regime. The embargo could end tomorrow, but Holiday Inn couldn't just show up and start building. That's why there are no Tim Horton's or Coast hotels in Cuba.
As usual, you missed the point entirely. The comment @320 was calling out the circular reasoning you employ in your closed, self-referential "logics." You argue that 1) there is no embargo, it's only make believe (or something), and thus 2) the embargo has no effect, but nonetheless 3) we shouldn't end the embargo because it would somehow be used as a propaganda tool by Castro.
It's a circle jerk of conditional reasoning, all built upon the steadfast religious assumption that whatever the US does is right, and whatever Cuba suffers is justified.
If you want to go to Cuba, you can go to Cuba.
You're being pedantic. The U.S. government has no way of knowing if a person has been to Cuba, and the only "bad thing" that can happen is a fine from the Treasury Dept. It's also easy to claim one of the licenses for travel (media, education, religious, etc.).
***
News flash: Two things can be true at once.
The current embargo is barely a shell of what it was when initially enacted, but it's still one of the Castro regime's main sources of propaganda.
I'd be for totally lifting the embargo tomorrow if anyone thought for a moment that it would inspire change in Cuba, but I'm not aware of anyone who believes the Castro brothers would do anything except continue with the status quo. There's not a scintilla of evidence that 85-year-old Fidel or 80-year-old Raul are mellowing with age, so why give them even a hollow victory on their way to history's scrap heap? At this point, it seems smarter to lift the embargo as an olive branch to the next person or persons who lead Cuba.
If the embargo is either 1) bad or 2) morally neutral but pointless, what does it matter what the Castros may or may not do in response? The United States should make or rescind policy based on her own internal calculations of what is right or wrong, not on the petty whims of some set of dictatorial brothers. Why would you yield such power to them?
I'm curious, Joe, since you seem to know a lot about the situation: When the embargo is lifted - and there are lots of direct flights and boats from Miami, and Cuban resorts and casinos advertising here, and baseball tour packages - do you think travel from the U.S. will increase? If so, by how much?
My guess would be that it will go up a hundredfold, at least.
That has to be qualified -- the main rightwing parties campaigned on a platform of "elect us, and we'll do away with the Constitution, dissolve the Cortés, and rule via dictatorship, after crushing our opponents." The election slogan of the main party of the right, CEDA, was "todo el poder para el Jefe" ('All power to the Leader'), quite clearly mimicking Nazi slogans. It seems to me that's a declaration of civil war by the right, should they win the election.
I haven't looked at Rev-Par for the Caribbean, but generally speaking, Cuba has to be at the extreme low end of the rate and occupancy spectrum.
Go to page 3 here for a good example of the impact of the US Market.
The Dominican Republic, for example, is extremely comparable to Cuba. In 2010, the DR had 2,898,176 visitors from outside the US. Cuba had 2,531,744. If we use that as a rough approximate, the embargo cost Cuba around a million visitors (around 30% of their total potential tourism).
Let me be clear: I don't think tourism is a panacea for Cuba. The largest economy with tourism as its largest export is Spain. It makes you extremely dependent on other societies. I do think that it would help accelerate change.
I can honestly say, this is the first.
According to KiwiCollection (where they're listed), the daily rate booked there over the last three months is $181. If we assume the same 72% occupancy rate there as in the rest of the Caribbean, that means the leader in the region is at a $130 ADR ... and that's with a few generous assumptions.
I would guesstimate that their occupancy is significantly lower than the average in the region, so I'd expect that number to be quite a bit worse. I would expect that Cuba lags the rest of the Caribbean by more than 30%.
If I wanted to make a conservative estimate, I would put the impact of the US market the year after Cuba were opened up at 30-50% increase in revPAR. If Cuba built cruise ship terminals, that would go up a lot more, of course.
It's not a matter of yielding power; it's a matter of protecting U.S. interests. As I've mentioned several times, the embargo mostly exists in name only, but the only part that truly remains in effect — i.e., the limits on credit and financial transactions — is the part worth keeping, at least while the Castros remain in power. If the U.S. lifted the embargo tomorrow but then refused to extend credit to Cuba, the Castro brothers and their leftist amigos would assuredly cry foul. (And make no mistake: Extending credit to Cuba would be asinine.) The U.S. is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.
***
I've mostly followed Cuba by accident, from baseball and from living in Miami for a few years. As far as I can tell, Cuba has a limited tourism capacity and little or no ability to expand its tourism capacity quickly. If the U.S. embargo was lifted, tourism would spike, but it could only spike within a narrow range due to a lack of hotel rooms. The Cuban government would probably triple the prices of its resorts to price out the Mexicans and other Latin tourists, but it just doesn't have the capacity for anything like a "hundredfold" increase in tourism, unless Americans bring tents or sleeping bags. In other words, the Cuban gov't would make money from U.S. tourism, but probably by raising prices rather than by accommodating a lot more people.
Long term, if Cuba ever truly opened up and allowed outside investment, I'd expect a feeding frenzy unlike anything that's been seen since the Gold Rush. With ~1,500 miles of warm-water beaches, the potential would be huge. But this would require major changes in Cuban policy rather than U.S. policy. Cuba has a few partnerships with foreign firms, but it still doesn't allow outside ownership of land, businesses, etc.
This is obviously 100% true. However, raising rates is a big deal in the hotel industry! Right now, Cuba has a sub 100 revPAR with low growth potential and high risk due to government intervention. It's a worse market than interior China!
A Cuba commanding revPar in the 200's becomes an enticing development opportunity--especially when building a hotel there won't get you in Dutch with the US market. Right now operators in Cuba are limited to being British boutique developers edit: among internationals. That's a pretty limited subset.
Also, I agree about the cruise ships. Those might be Cuba's best bet in the short term, although the average revenue per visitor would probably be a lot lower than with hotel nights and resort stays.
I don't know what the back end looks like--I do not have a ton of experience in the Caribbean market in general and zero in Cuba. It's my impression that in Cuba, like in a lot of countries, you have to have a local partner to develop.
However, it's the norm for a hotel management company (Hilton, Starwood, Four Seasons, etc.) to not own the physical plant. It's my understanding that is how Iberostar operates their properties in Cuba. They hire the staff, provide the marketing, serve the guest, and pass a percentage along to the property owner. Not owning the property is hardly a deal breaker.
You can take a look at the upcoming Taj in Marrakech as a good example of this. It's sort of star-crossed. Mandarin Oriental develops the property with the ownership group. It gets featured in Sex and the City 2 back in 2009. Development abruptly gets put on hold. Mandarin eventually backs out, someone else (a middle-eastern hotel company I can't remember). The physical hotel has been ready since 2009 to open its doors, but hold-ups with the management contract and staffing means the hotel has been shut for 3 years and still is not open (as of March 2012).
Generally speaking, hotel management companies don't want to own the physical plant, as they would have to be experts in the real estate market in hundreds of local markets.
Now, all that being said, from what Frommers says here, the main international player is this British boutique developer called "Havana Holdings" or "Esencia Group." They are at least part stake-holders in each property if I read the website right.
Allegedly, the rule is that foreign involvement cannot exceed 50%. Sol Melia has partial stakes in most of their properties according to this (9 years old, though, so who knows?)
And yet when Ronald Reagan gave a speech somewhere in the same vicinity where something bad happened, he "obviously" meant to signal support for it.
EDIT: Greg Pope's defense -- that English isn't Guillen's native language -- is at least a little more persuasive than Andy making up claims about how saying that one loves him doesn't actually mean one loves him. Not that I'm ultimately persuaded -- Guillen is pretty darn fluent in English -- but at least it's not utterly silly. Yeah, it's just so easy to "respect" someone for managing to stay in power by killing or imprisoning anyone who challenges him.
I think Andy is clearly over-reacting on this one in opposition. Your persistently incorrect dismissal of history is not relevant or applicable, however.
David, I love you for what you are, which is an opinionated little piece of flab who employs every rhetorical trick in the sophist's playbook in order to throw a monkey wrench in any attempt by many of the rest of us to reach a consensus on any one of a gazillion subjects.
I unreservedly respect the fact that you can quote the law chapter and verse in the service of achieving your life's goal of drowning the government in the bathtub.
I admire you for adhering to your "principles", even though your interpretation of those "principles" is usually in the service of bloodless and inhuman ends.
I often get a kick out of your cartoonish if inflammatory rhetoric about "Stalinist" congressional investigations, "guns" pointed at you come tax day, and most of all, the idea that by taxing you the government is "stealing" your life. That's a line that should make any shyster lawyer proud to have you in his firm.
But I mean it when I say that I truly love you for all of the above, and I'd even go beyond Guillen, and repeat my love for you under oath. I guess that means that our local literalminded liberal caucus should be calling on me to apologize for being a crypto-Nieporentite.
Oh, "obviously." <Rolls eyes.>
And yet when Ronald Reagan gave a speech somewhere in the same vicinity where something bad happened, he "obviously" meant to signal support for it.
Yes, David, the clear purpose of Ozzie Guillen's original comment was a cynical attempt to win the support of Castro supporters. Great analogy.
Did the headline writer mean it to be offensive? Probably not, but he screwed the pooch big time and generated a tremendous public backlash against his employer. As such, he probably deserved to get canned.
Here, Ozzie probably didn't mean exactly what he said, but he still screwed up and his screw up had consequences. If this continues to be an issue for the Marlins, they'll have to take further action.
This isn't a "left vs right" thing; it's a "don't do stupid things that put your employer in compromising positions" thing.
My dog finds this offensive.
No, it's a "when you live in a pluralistic society you give people the benefit of the doubt and don't sanctify your single, narrow political position." You don't continually ##### and whine and take "offense" and think that everyone's life and outlook must revolve around whatever whim your blinkered perspective spits out.
I'll happily find this an incredibly reasonable response.
I'm not shocked that this is not.
That isn't surprising. Modern liberals are not pluralists at heart, as we see in almost every "political" thread on these boards.
Did the headline writer mean it to be offensive? Probably not, but he screwed the pooch big time and generated a tremendous public backlash against his employer. As such, he probably deserved to get canned.
Here, Ozzie probably didn't mean exactly what he said, but he still screwed up and his screw up had consequences. If this continues to be an issue for the Marlins, they'll have to take further action.
This isn't a "left vs right" thing; it's a "don't do stupid things that put your employer in compromising positions" thing.
That's a good rule to use, but it doesn't mean that if you inadvertently put your foot in your mouth you shouldn't be given a chance to clarify your comments. In turn, that doesn't mean that all such clarifications are equally credible, but it does mean that the definition of what's "offensive" should go by default to the most easily offended people in the room.
It also means that you should consider the context of the remark, and the history of the person making it. In this case, Guillen had already denounced Castro's Venezuelan protege in other instances, and given that history, it's hard to believe that his "love" for Castro meant anything in the way of political support. This isn't like Rush Limbaugh's "slut" comment about the Georgetown student, which was in goosestep with similar personal insults he's aimed at women in the past.
Unfortunately, if your dog has any sway in Lansing-area elections, I may as well pack up my office right now.
I think that many of the protesters in this case are acting in an unreasonable manner. But that doesn't really absolve Ozzie or the Marlins here; they're in the entertainment business, and idiots buy tickets too.
"Don't say you love Fidel Castro if you're a public figure in Miami" is both a sensible rule and one that is easy to adhere to.
Pluralism means giving people who were personally affected by horrible circumstances the benefit of the doubt.
Pluralism does not mean everyone should feel like you do from far, far away instead.
As to what they went through, I do. As to their contra-pluralist behavior, I don't -- even though I agree with the essence of their viewpoint on Castro. It's their fault the "business issue" exists in the first place. If they were behaving appropriately, it wouldn't.
You know when Limbaugh finally comes out of the closet or is outted, nobody is going to be happy.
This is a good description of how people should react to the comments. It's not particularly helpful to the Marlins, however, now that a very different reaction has already occurred. Further, it doesn't really absolve Ozzie, because the reaction that did in fact occur was extremely foreseeable.
Any thinking person would know that saying you love Castro will generate a large, negative reaction in Miami. And any thinking person would know that a large, negative reaction will jeopardize your career if you're in the public eye.
Unfortunately, Ozzie has never shown a tremendous flair for thinking.
Primarily because you're a wuss.
This is not what "benefit of the doubt" means. You want them to think like you do. You want pluralism to mean they should think like the majority does.
Just say you disagree with them, period, it's clearer and cleaner. Don't try and make up issues and use buzzwords to kick "modern liberals" with, agenda-man.
That's not even close to what I think. They can think whatever they want. They have a fundamental duty as American citizens to understand that everybody else does, too. Their conduct is not commensurate with that duty; single-issue ######## and whining generally isn't (*), and this is no exception.
(*) Even when I agree with its underlying viewpoint.
Is it? Here's a hypothetical:
I'm walking up to a cross-walk, and I desire to cross the street. I look to my left and see a car speeding in my direction, with the driver staring down at his phone as he sends a text message. I am quite certain that if I go to cross the street, the speeding car will hit me. However, because I desire to cross the street and have the right of way, I step into the street anyways, where I am immediately struck by the speeding car.
Now, whose fault is the accident? On one hand, I had the right of way and was legally permitted to step into the street, while the car that struck me was in violation of several laws due to speeding, failure to yield, and texting while driving. On the other hand, I was well aware that excercising the right of way would lead to me being struck by a car.
I think many of the protesters are being ridiculous, but their ridiculous behavior was totally foreseeable. Ozzie is not an innocent victim here, he should have known better. If the protesters were more reasonable this business issue wouldn't exist, but if Ozzie exercised more common sense this business issue wouldn't exist either.
Beyond all of that, it's more theory than anything else to say that Cuba is losing big money on U.S. tourist travel, because (1) Americans have been able to travel to Cuba at almost no risk for 20 years
I suppose it's possible, but it's much more difficult than traveling anywhere else in the Caribbean. My in-laws live in South Florida and we spend Christmas there each year before going on vacation. It's a 30 minute flight to get to the Bahamas, marginally longer than that to get to the DR, a few hours to Belize, but if we wanted to go to Cuba I don't even know how long it would take because I can't search for those flights on U.S. travel websites. Whether we could go there or not is sort of irrelevant; when you throw up roadblocks that make it a much longer and more difficult trip than other nearby locations, of course you're going to put a serious dent in tourism.
But what I can't understand is their refusal to take a step back, listen to Ozzie's explanation, look at his past statements about a similar demagogic dictator (Chavez), note his tendency to shoot from the hip, and conclude that he's not exactly a spokesman for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. It's not their initial overreaction that creeps me out, it's their refusal to adjust their reaction in the light of everything that's developed since then. Since it's obvious that their message to Ozzie has gotten across, to keep hitting on both him and the Marlins amounts to little more than a variant on what Tom Wolfe once described as Mau-Mauism.
I'm inclined to think that has less to do with Ozzie, and more to do with the fact that the exiles have a national stage right now and they intend to broadcast from it for as long as they possibly can. Never let a controversy go to waste, so to speak.
A big part of it is the culture's solitiousness toward single-issue ######## and whining, and "offense"-taking. They're encouraged to be uncompromising, to keep ######## and whining, and to keep on and on about how "offended" they are.
That's a fair analogy, except that I think that it's much easier for your hypothetical pedestrian to figure out the consequences of entering the crosswalk than it was for Guillen to think about the consequences of his particular choice of words in the context of a give and take interview. In hindsight he clearly realizes that he should've thought before he rambled, but there's a difference between accidental stupidity and a willful refusal to give him the benefit of the doubt after his many subsequent explanations. What Guillen said was stupid in the context of Miami politics, but what the Cuban exiles and their supporters are engaging in now goes far beyond temporary stupidity, and gets into Sharpton territory.
That's because your dog is a #####.
EDIT: Damn you, nanny - you need to account for context!
True and true, and that's why I bring up the Sharpton comparison.
I have no sympathy for Ozzie, since what he said was stupid, and he has a history of saying stupid things.
I have no sympathy for the protestors, because they're being generally unreasonable.
I have no sympathy for the Marlins, since they knew what they were getting into with Ozzie.
It's all just very "ugh" to me.
You've been busy, what with the children & all.
Once they're raised, there'll be time.
The Stone Mountain branch of Morrison's cafeteria would be resurrected and shake the Earth in protest.
Now, does that mean I think Guillen should necessarily have been suspended? No, I'm not saying that. If you are willing to believe that he didn't really mean it, fine. (Where "political correctness" becomes so obnoxious is where it refuses to look at what the speaker meant, and insists that all that matters is that someone took offense.) But let's not pretend there's nothing wrong with liking Castro.
DRINK!
If we're going to play that game, I'm going to have to start putting DMN & his fellow lunatic rightists on "ignore" till at least noon every single day.
Come to think of it, I'll also have to somehow procure an entirely new digestive system.
(Note to self: Explore scenario wherein intestinal & esophageal tracts are coated with teflon.)
Chiang Kai Shek is still a respected figure in Republican circles, isn't he? That whole "unleash Chiang" stuff from the Bush tennis courts? You can see that even Franco is not in total disregard.
I think the Che shirts are stupid, too. It isn't evidence of some grand conspiracy, though.
I'm going to go out on a limb & say it's irrational to hate Castro to the extent that one throws oneself on the ground & holds one's breath while turning purple & drumming one's little feet on the ground any time anyone mentions his name in the context of anything other than a death threat.
That, to me, is what the maniacal Miami expatriate population tends to do.
I'd infinitely rather see a Che shirt than an Ayn Rand shirt ... though I guess even callow money-worshiping kids aren't stupid enough in general to effect such a pose for public consumption.
(It's no secret, of course, that I'm extremely biased.)
Didn't say it was. I said it was evidence of a mindset in which the evils of communism are just not taken that seriously. None of the people wearing those shirts would tolerate someone wearing, say, a David Duke shirt, let alone a Mussolini shirt. Wearing that is like flying the Confederate flag.
I love this. In a totally ironic, non Guillen-loving-Castro sort of way. It's only "stupid in the context of Miami politics," as if it's irrational to hate Castro. Your comment is like claiming that Marge Schott's Hitler-praise would only have been stupid if said in a heavily Jewish area, but was otherwise unobjectionable.
IOW you're equating Guillen's intital comments about Castro's longevity with Schott's praise of Hitler "at the beginning", when as you're fully aware, he was already rounding up people for concentration camps and instigating pogroms throughout Germany. I doubt that even you would seriously make such an comparison if you paused to think about it for more than a nanosecond.
And BTW just to be clear, I don't think Schott's inane and offensive comment deserved anything more than a sarcastic response that took her lack of intelligence into account. Her sense of history was about as well developed as Sarah Palin's.
It's part of -- notwithstanding Andy's claim to have "seen through Castro" -- the whitewashing of communism by the left. The same attitude that allows people to wear Che shirts without being ostracized from society. Despite the occasional mouthing of anti-communist platitudes, at the end of the day, communist dictatorship is just not that offensive to them.
I gather that the spectacle of a few thousand kids wearing Che T-shirts evidently offends you more than the spectacle of a few tens of thousands of capitalists more than willing to do business with China's Communist henchmen. This is what happens when "libertarians" adopt a "principled" opposition to Communist tyranny---as long as they're willing to let American private property alone**, who cares what happens to ordinary Chinese?
**But OTOH those dirty Chinese DVD pirates and Nike sneaker bootleggers, HOW DARE THEY!!!!!
Now, does that mean I think Guillen should necessarily have been suspended? No, I'm not saying that.
Good to know that.
If you are willing to believe that he didn't really mean it, fine.
Glad you're finally seeing the light about that, though you could have fooled us with your previous comments.
(Where "political correctness" becomes so obnoxious is where it refuses to look at what the speaker meant, and insists that all that matters is that someone took offense.)
That's exactly the point many of us have been trying to make ever since this thread began.
But let's not pretend there's nothing wrong with liking Castro.
There's certainly plenty of wrong in defending Castro or any other dictator, but that begs the question (as you finally seem to acknowledge above) as to whether Guillen was "liking", "loving", or "defending" him in any substantive way.
And that's why Santorum quit. What happened to American morality? We've lost our way.
Yes, and that's why the comments from some of the leftists over the past week regarding this issue, along the lines of "What are you guys arguing about? I don't see anyone praising or defending Castro here," have been amusing.
Andy's comments typify "what people are arguing about."
There are certain times when perception is reality, Andy, and this is one of those times. I'm sorry you don't agree with the Cuban emigrant population that what Guillen said was an absolute level of public - even begrudging - affection, but it really was. And people got pissed. That's what the reality is here.
A lot of people, probably most, who were affected by them don't give a crap about the political theory behind Castro's actions, and therefore they similarly don't care what Guillen said about Chavez. They care - passionately - that someone expressed a definite level of affection for someone who made their lives unbelievably miserable, period. That's it.
Yes, and that's why the comments from some of the leftists over the past week regarding this issue, along the lines of "What are you guys arguing about? I don't see anyone praising or defending Castro here," have been amusing. Andy's comments typify "what people are arguing about."
High five!
I'm going to keep doing this until you admit it's always been a stupid thing to say.
Question for David, Ray, et al. Setting aside his role in the Cuban government, do you think Che had a legitimate beef with the status quo in Latin America?
No, you just implied it with every keystroke. Good god son. Grow a pair and at least own your positions.
Because the only people who take the evils of communism seriously are people who believe exactly what you believe. Please.
I could show you any number of underground/hipsterish counter cultures that wear Nazi, white supremacist, etc clothes, sometimes ironically, and sometimes only "ironically" if they're trying to deny it's not ironic. But hey, you don't see it on streets of Jersey or whereever, so it must not exist. Because your entire universe is collapsed to the size of your own pinhead.
Which thousands upon thousands of the "base" of the political parties you align with (every single time) do every single day.
Row 2, Column 2.
Actually the reality -- and the problem -- is that they stayed pissed.
I'm in Alabama; if I want to see that, all I have to do is drive a few blocks. I suspect it's comparable for Sam in Georgia. It was definitely true when I was living in Arkansas.
And as Sam implied, juat about all of those people would be happy as clams (or should I say Klans?) to take your side in any argument about ... well, just about anything.
I hope you're proud.
Revolutions for some, brutal lesser of two evils for others...
So, no. I fit about 20 of the other squares in that grid, but not the one you claim.
TYPICAL BUSINESS AS USUAL INSIDER POLITICS.
I think you'd have to let them know what the marginal tax rates were under Fulgencio Batista before they would answer that question.
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