Tag Archives: Cuba

Filosofa’s Look Into The Present …

Posted on by under Humour, Political commentary

Yesterday I was riffling through some older posts, in search of the first post of my Monday morning, Jolly Monday, feature, which I never did find, but I came across an interesting post that I wrote in March 2016.  It was meant to be humorous, and was, in a dark sort of way … a predictive piece about what a Trump presidency would look like after the first six months.  Remember that at the time, I was sincerely convinced that Trump stood absolutely no chance of winning the election, so it was a bit easier then to be rather glib than it is today.  But still, there is some humour in it, and most importantly, it is somewhat of a comfort to see that at least some of my predictions did not come to pass.  At any rate, I thought I would share this today … if for no other reason than a chuckle or two, and to give you further reason to never trust my predictive skills.

DATELINE: 15 JULY 2017

nnison under Humour
It is July 2017, and President Donald Trump has been in office for six months now.  Much has changed since the beginning of the year.  Let us first look back at the past six months, then we will look at what is happening in the big Gold House today.
The immigration crisis in the U.S. has reversed itself and turned from a problem of immigration to one of mass emigration.  Whereas one year ago, we were mostly concerned with Syrian refugees flooding the country, the concern now is U.S. citizens trying to flee the country.  Some 250,000 fled over the U.S./Canadian border during the first quarter of 2017.  Canada closed its border to U.S. citizens at the end of March, and the latest wave of emigrants have been heading over the Mexican border or attempting the 90-mile journey to Cuba in yachts and other small pleasure craft.  So far there have been few mishaps, however as more and more people try to leave U.S. territory, that is likely to change soon.  A small number have fled to the European continent; however, the EU has made it clear that immigrants from the U.S. are persona non grata.  EU President Jean-Claude Juncker, in his statement last Friday, said, “Americans made their beds last November.  Let them wallow in them.”  Meanwhile, President Trump has issued an executive order stating that any U.S. citizen caught trying to leave the country will be imprisoned for a minimum of 90 days and subject to waterboarding during that time.  This is a reversal of the statement that Trump issued in February when the emigration began and he reportedly said, “I don’t give a shit.  Let them all go.  I don’t need them and they are the ones who will be sorry.  They will be sorry.”
President Trump and Vice President Palin recently returned from a trip to Russia where they met with Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials.  Trump pledged military aid to Russia for its effort to gain control over remaining Ukrainian and other territories.  “We’re gonna send them planes and bombs … lots of bombs … lots of bombs”, Trump told reporters yesterday.  Ms. Palin, asked what she felt was accomplished by the trip, answered “Oh MY … I did sooooo much shopping!  I got the most adorable little bolero!”
Trump News, formerly Fox News, is reporting that the senate failed to confirm Trumps nomination of Judith Sheindlin (aka Judge Judy) to fill the current opening on the Supreme Court.  Trump ordered the senate to reconsider the matter and take another vote on Monday, stating that if the confirmation is not forthcoming, he will “fire all the senators who voted against the nomination”.  Informed by aides that he does not have the power to fire senators, he responded “I will pass a law.  I will pass a law so that I can fire senators.  I will pass a law.”  Informed that he does not have the power to single-handedly pass a law, he fired the aides.
President Trump has announced that he will not attend the Global United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in November.  “Climate change is all a hoax.  It’s all a hoax and those people are boring.  I like people who want to have fun.  All those people do is sit around and talk about a myth.  Climate change is a myth.  We’re gonna take the oil and we’re gonna burn the oil and we’re gonna burn the coal.  I like to spend my time with people who are fun.  Those people aren’t fun.”  In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Trump replied to the question of how he plans to ‘take the oil’: “We’re gonna take the oil, okay?  We’re gonna take the oil.  They are gonna give us the oil just so we don’t bomb the [bleep] out of them.”
Which brings us to today’s news.  Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader of the DPRK (North Korea) issued a warning that if all sanctions against North Korea are not lifted by the end of this month, he will launch missiles armed with nuclear warheads at the United States and other western nations.  President Trump responded by saying “we will bomb him first.  I’ve got a nuclear arsenal at my disposal and I will use it.  I will bomb all of Korea off the map.  I will bomb the shit out of them.  Bring me that red phone.  Where is that red phone?  I will bomb them now!”  An anonymous source within the White Gold House tells us that the red phone could not be found and that the president has ordered a new one to be delivered tomorrow. Defense Secretary Chris Christie was fired for apparently losing the red phone.  The world stands at the brink of all-out war, a brink as we have not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.  We can only hope that this is resolved without disaster, as was the Cuban Missile Crisis.  President Trump is no Kennedy.
I really started out with the intention of this being a humorous piece, but every time I read it, it seems less funny.  I considered not even posting it, but I will and let the chips fall where they may.  Feel free to remind me that humour is supposed to be funny.  I apparently forgot how to do funny. 
And the comments at the time:
  • “The six scariest words I have heard in some time, ‘President Trump and Vice President Palin’.”
  • “Yes, there is such a thing as dark humor…”
  • “It is funny, in a weird and twisted way… 😉 Funny, but also sad. Well, if you need to emigrate, I will vouch for you… and tell the EU administration that you definitely have not voted for Trump! 😉”

 

America’s #1 Bimbo …

Posted on by under Humour, Political commentary

Michele Bachman, on why she believes God caused terrorist attacks in Brussels this week in order to humiliate President Obama: “Maybe our president’s humiliation comes in a manner so devastating it makes one wonder whether the Creator of humankind isn’t reminding this world of the inferiority of foolishness in the face of wisdom.” Bachmann accused Obama of allegedly mocking Israel and Jews by bringing media attention to his historic trip to Cuba, rather than on the attacks in Brussels. Continuing, the former Minnesota representative also claimed that the president was upset about the attacks only because attention was being diverted from his visit. “Obama’s slavish press corps was forced to turn their uncritical gaze from adoring him to revealing the newest carnage in Brussels,” she wrote, “Our eyes were spellbound.”  And this … “Our feckless U.S. president appeared unfazed by the message he portrayed of American incompetence and historic irrelevance.”

Those were the words of the woman who once ran for president (2012).  Those were the words of America’s #1 bimbo, even more stupid than Sarah Palin, and that is saying a lot.  This is the same woman who, during the campaign of 2012, declared that Paul Revere, in fact, made his “midnight ride” to warn … not the patriots, but the British!  She obviously went to a different school and read a different set of history books than I.

Why, you ask, am I wasting my time with a has-been, a washed-out wanna-be, when there are so many more important targets for my snarky prose … things that that pose a real threat to the world?  The answer is two-fold.  First, Ms. Bachman is too easy, too much fun to leave alone!  I write about the Trumps, the Cruz’s, Daesh, immigration, the refugee crisis, racism, bigotry … nearly every day.  I’m not going to stop writing about the serious issues and trying to open the eyes of those who are not seeing the world clearly,  but every now and then, even I need a bit of fun, and quite frankly, Bachman is a hoot!  She makes me feel like an Einstein!  The second part of the answer is that she is still speaking and her words are still being noted by the press, which means that people are still hearing her.  Until she loses her public voice, people need to be reminded that she “knows not of what she speaks”. I must wonder how the good people of Minnesota allowed her to stay in the U.S. House of Representatives as their representative for a full eight years and the state senate prior to that!  I hear it snows a lot and gets very cold in Minnesota …

More dumb and dumber quotes by Michele Bachman:

  • “Our movement at its core is an intellectual movement.” –Rep. Michele Bachmann on the Tea Party movement, CPAC conference, March 2014  Seriously?  Could have fooled me, but then what do I know?
  • “Why should I go and do something like that? But the Lord says, ‘Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands.” -Rep. Michele Bachmann, recalling in a 2006 speech at a Megachurch in Minneapolis that pursuing tax law wasn’t her choice, but she did so at the urging of her husband because she was certain God was speaking through him. No wonder I didn’t make a very good wife … I forgot that subservient thing.
  • “If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” -Michele Bachmann, Jan. 2005. Oh yeah … a lot of people want to work for $1.25 per hour!
  • “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” -Rep. Michele Bachmann, on the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak that happened when Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president, April 28, 2009. Hey, I wonder who she thinks is responsible for Ebola?  The first case was diagnosed in 1976, also when Gerald Ford was president …
  • “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009    I think she breathed a bit too much of that CO2.
  • “But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. … I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.” -Rep. Michele Bachmann, botching American history while speaking at an Iowan’s for Tax Relief event in January 2011. The Founding Fathers did not work to end slavery, and John Quincy Adams was not one of the Founding Fathers. Slavery was not abolished until nearly 100 years after the ratification of the Constitution.  Somebody please put this woman out of our misery!  I knew that when I was 8 years old!

Again, I wrote this post mostly for my own humour and I did have fun with it.  But I do have to get serious for just a minute.  This person spent eight years representing the state of Minnesota, 5.457 million people, in the United States Congress.  How?  Why?  As a representative, she was up for re-election every two years, meaning she was actually elected at least four times by the people of Minnesota!  Prior to that, she was a state senator. Think about that.  Although I am a liberal who mostly votes democrat, I am also a long-time student of political science and I do understand the importance of a two-party system.  That said, with people like Michele Bachman and Donald Trump representing one of those parties, is it any wonder the GOP is going down for the third time?  It almost seems that it is a culture of stupidity, a culture that promotes the idea that if you say it loudly enough, it doesn’t matter how stupid it is.  Again … think about it.

 

A Gesture of Friendship

Posted on by under Global Issues

This morning I watched President Obama address the Cuban people, and as I watched, I found myself thinking that I will miss this president greatly come next January.  I am sure to hear from those who have done nothing to help and everything to criticize during his presidency, but I, for one, know that no matter which of the current candidates, democrat or republican, becomes the next president of the United States, I will feel less secure a year from now than I do today.  In my opinion, President Obama has brought intellect, dignity and reason to the office, a welcome change after the chaos and turmoil of the previous administration.

President Obama’s visit to Cuba marks a milestone in Cuban-U.S. relations, one that I hope is a sign of better relations between our nations going forward.  The last time a U.S. president visited Cuba was in 1928, when President Calvin Coolidge attended the Pan American games.  Since then, we have seen 60 years of conflict between the neighboring nations that spanned the terms of 11 US presidents.  Many have asked the question, “why now?”  The answer, according to President Obama is fairly simple.  “What the United States was doing was not working. We have to have the courage to acknowledge that truth. A policy of isolation designed for the Cold War made little sense in the 21st century. The embargo was only hurting the Cuban people instead of helping them. And I’ve always believed in what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now” — we should not fear change, we should embrace it. Creo en el pueblo Cubano. I believe in the Cuban people. This is not just a policy of normalizing relations with the Cuban government. The United States of America is normalizing relations with the Cuban people.”  The White House originally said the president would travel to the island nation only after seeing substantive change, but President Obama decided to visit Cuba early to help accelerate that change.

The president’s address appeared to be  well received by the Cuban people.  He touched briefly on the shared heritage between the U.S. and Cuba, referencing a shared love of baseball (including the fact that Jackie Robinson once played on a field in Cuba, which drew hearty applause), a culture of slaves long ago imported from Africa, Dr. Carlos Finlay, Ernest Hemingway, and the fact that both of our nations have opened our arms and hearts to immigrants.  He also mentioned our shared common values of patriotism, pride and a shared religion. On the other side, he noted our differences, saying “Cuba has emphasized the role and rights of the state; the United States is founded upon the rights of the individual.”

I will not recount the entire speech, but will include a link at the end of this post to the transcript for any who may wish to read it.  However a few of the highlights bear repeating here:

  • “Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but to get here we had to travel a great distance — over barriers of history and ideology; barriers of pain and separation.”
  • “As the decades rolled by, our governments settled into a seemingly endless confrontation, fighting battles through proxies. In a world that remade itself time and again, one constant was the conflict between the United States and Cuba.”
  • “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people.”
  • “And since 1959, we’ve been shadow-boxers in this battle of geopolitics and personalities. I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it.”

For those who would criticize Obama for normalizing relations with Cuba and for visiting a country known for its human rights violations, the president said this to the Cuban people: “I believe that every person should be equal under the law.  Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads.  I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear — to organize, and to criticize their government, and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights. I believe that every person should have the freedom to practice their faith peacefully and publicly. And, yes, I believe voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections. Not everybody agrees with me on this. Not everybody agrees with the American people on this. But I believe those human rights are universal. I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world.”

And finally, I must touch on the criticism that I recently heard that, in light of the terrorist attacks in Brussels this morning, the president should have cut his trip to Cuba short and returned home early.  I see this as just another partisan (not to mention utterly ridiculous) attempt to criticize and discredit the president.  The president was in Cuba to work toward improving relations between our two nations.  Had he returned to Washington, what could he have done that would have changed the situation in Belgium?  Nothing.  I understand that the republicans delight in finding fresh ways to criticize President Obama, and I understand that this is an election year and the rhetoric is magnified by at least 1,000.  But people, this criticism was in such poor taste that it had even this old seasoned Filosofa’s mouth dropping open.  It was in bad taste, it was inappropriate criticism, and it was a slap in the face toward Belgium, toward Cuba, and toward all of us good people in this nation and around the world.

There is no valid reason to maintain a hostile environment between our two nations, and I believe that President Obama made that point quite well.  The new strategy is to work with Cuba rather than against it; to attempt to improve life in the country through negotiations and commercial ties rather than attempting to topple the communist government through isolation and economic pressure.  Can anybody deny that this makes sense? We do not always need to see eye-to-eye with our friends to be … friends.  We do not need to impose our own beliefs, our own values, on our neighbors to be good neighbors.  In today’s global environment, it is far better to be friends and neighbors than enemies.  Let’s face it … we have enough enemies already.

Link to full transcript of Obama’s address: http://www.voanews.com/content/obama-cuba-speech-to-people-of-cuba-full-transcript/3249200.html

Dateline: 15 July 2017

Posted on by under Humour

It is July 2017, and President Donald Trump has been in office for six months now.  Much has changed since the beginning of the year.  Let us first look back at the past six months, then we will look at what is happening in the big Gold House today.

The immigration crisis in the U.S. has reversed itself and turned from a problem of immigration to one of mass emigration.  Whereas one year ago, we were mostly concerned with Syrian refugees flooding the country, the concern now is U.S. citizens trying to flee the country.  Some 250,000 fled over the U.S./Canadian border during the first quarter of 2017.  Canada closed its border to U.S. citizens at the end of March, and the latest wave of emigrants have been heading over the Mexican border or attempting the 90-mile journey to Cuba in yachts and other small pleasure craft.  So far there have been few mishaps, however as more and more people try to leave U.S. territory, that is likely to change soon.  A small number have fled to the European continent; however, the EU has made it clear that immigrants from the U.S. are persona non grata.  EU President Jean-Claude Juncker, in his statement last Friday, said, “Americans made their beds last November.  Let them wallow in them.”  Meanwhile, President Trump has issued an executive order stating that any U.S. citizen caught trying to leave the country will be imprisoned for a minimum of 90 days and subject to waterboarding during that time.  This is a reversal of the statement that Trump issued in February when the emigration began and he reportedly said, “I don’t give a shit.  Let them all go.  I don’t need them and they are the ones who will be sorry.  They will be sorry.”

President Trump and Vice President Palin recently returned from a trip to Russia where they met with Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials.  Trump pledged military aid to Russia for its effort to gain control over remaining Ukrainian and other territories.  “We’re gonna send them planes and bombs … lots of bombs … lots of bombs”, Trump told reporters yesterday.  Ms. Palin, asked what she felt was accomplished by the trip, answered “Oh MY … I did sooooo much shopping!  I got the most adorable little bolero!”

Trump News, formerly Fox News, is reporting that the senate failed to confirm Trumps nomination of Judith Sheindlin (aka Judge Judy) to fill the current opening on the Supreme Court.  Trump ordered the senate to reconsider the matter and take another vote on Monday, stating that if the confirmation is not forthcoming, he will “fire all the senators who voted against the nomination”.  Informed by aides that he does not have the power to fire senators, he responded “I will pass a law.  I will pass a law so that I can fire senators.  I will pass a law.”  Informed that he does not have the power to single-handedly pass a law, he fired the aides.

President Trump has announced that he will not attend the Global United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in November.  “Climate change is all a hoax.  It’s all a hoax and those people are boring.  I like people who want to have fun.  All those people do is sit around and talk about a myth.  Climate change is a myth.  We’re gonna take the oil and we’re gonna burn the oil and we’re gonna burn the coal.  I like to spend my time with people who are fun.  Those people aren’t fun.”  In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Trump replied to the question of how he plans to ‘take the oil’: “We’re gonna take the oil, okay?  We’re gonna take the oil.  They are gonna give us the oil just so we don’t bomb the [bleep] out of them.”

Which brings us to today’s news.  Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader of the DPRK (North Korea) issued a warning that if all sanctions against North Korea are not lifted by the end of this month, he will launch missiles armed with nuclear warheads at the United States and other western nations.  President Trump responded by saying “we will bomb him first.  I’ve got a nuclear arsenal at my disposal and I will use it.  I will bomb all of Korea off the map.  I will bomb the shit out of them.  Bring me that red phone.  Where is that red phone?  I will bomb them now!”  An anonymous source within the White Gold House tells us that the red phone could not be found and that the president has ordered a new one to be delivered tomorrow. Defense Secretary Chris Christie was fired for apparently losing the red phone.  The world stands at the brink of all-out war, a brink as we have not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.  We can only hope that this is resolved without disaster, as was the Cuban Missile Crisis.  President Trump is no Kennedy.

I really started out with the intention of this being a humorous piece, but every time I read it, it seems less funny.  I considered not even posting it, but I will and let the chips fall where they may.  Feel free to remind me that humour is supposed to be funny.  I apparently forgot how to do funny.